


Zero Summer

by lisainthesky, queenmab_scherzo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gun Violence, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Science Fiction, unnecessary bird symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2018-08-29 15:12:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8494792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisainthesky/pseuds/lisainthesky, https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmab_scherzo/pseuds/queenmab_scherzo
Summary: In the 21st century, Steve and Bucky fight and die side-by-side for the U.S. Army.Three hundred years later, Steve wakes up in a government-controlled facility in the middle of a mega-metropolis. They say he gave his life for peace and freedom. But underneath the government's pristine cityscape, Steve slowly discovers a world of police violence, riots, war, and fear—and at the center of it all, Sam Wilson.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a few months ago i (mab) made a [dumb text post](http://queenmabscherzo.tumblr.com/post/148510539798/au-where-steve-and-bucky-grow-up-together-in-the) about a steve/bucky sci fi au. [lisainthesky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lisainthesky/pseuds/lisainthesky) messaged me and said "WE HAVE TO WRITE THIS," and now we've built this post apocalyptic wasteland with a cast of thousands. hope you enjoy.
> 
> thanks to [mutationalfalsetto](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mutationalfalsetto/pseuds/mutationalfalsetto) for looking over this first chapter and assuring me that it's only a little bit confusing.

It starts with the birds.

Sam can sense their distress from the way they flap into flight, feathers foaming around his feet. He hugs the fire escape tight. Pigeons. They’re fine, they follow him everywhere and keep him wise to the ground-level, or the sky-level, or wherever he’s not. But right now, they're losing it. They flutter past, little machine-gun wings beating by his face, all too fast to understand what they’re saying.

It’s fear, Sam thinks.

“Billy,” Sam says as the last bird swoops by his right ear, “Billy, where’s Eli?”

They’re perched about thirty stories up, no time for vertigo. Sam dangles off the outside of the fire escape, a gun that he’d rather not use strapped to his back. It gives him the best view of the Square and the Statue. The target.

On the nearest platform, Billy crouches in a corner, one hand buried in his wild black hair, the other wrapped around the base of a long, thin antenna, so tight his knuckles go white. When Sam speaks, Billy’s eyes go round and glassy.

Took him awhile to get used to it, the way Billy zombies out, but now Sam can recognize the way he melts into the radio waves. Sam doesn’t know how it works, actually, and for that matter Billy doesn’t either. But it does work.

_"We’re doing this,"_ Billy says in his weird thousand-kilohertz voice. “ _You’re good to go, boss_.”

Good to go. Yeah, right. Across the street, a crow caws plaintive and black.

_He’s back_.

“Are they in position?” Sam asks. “Is Eli—”

“ _Started assault_ ,” Billy says, eyes fixed on nothing and no one at all. “ _Can’t talk. The Soldier is here_.”

“They’re sure it’s the Soldier?” Sam hisses.

Billy blinks. He brushes a long wiry curl out of his eyes, and they clear up, and he looks at Sam. “It’s chasing them now.”

_Fuck_ , Sam thinks, and says it out loud too, “Fuck,” just for good measure. “They can get away, right?”

Billy grimaces. “I hope. That’s the plan.”

The plan, the damn plan. Sam shouldn’t be making plans, at all, but here they are, a bunch of rag-tag kids following gruesome orders from Sam Wilson of all people, like he knows what the hell he’s doing.

“Yeah,” he says softly, and turns back to the Square. “That’s the plan.”

The city streets are all ninety degrees and gray concrete. Tunnel vision, a swiftly narrowing shaft of gold pinpricks and neon words. Sam stretches out into space, hanging onto the fire escape with one hand, and gazes down the street. Schmidt Street.

A crow shouts.

_He’s back_.

The Statue is there, a block away, as tall as a building, as tall as the ego that built it. Another cloud of pigeons fogs his vision. “Tell Kate to move in,” Sam says. His voice sounds weird, even in his own head. Like a crow talking.

From the corner of his eye, Sam can see Billy going all radio-robot as he relays the message to Kate.

The plan is to send a message, that’s all, nothing vicious. They found the flag four weeks ago and they faked a gentle discourse, like _here it is, now what do we do?_ But as soon as Sam saw it, he knew. They have to deliver it to the Baron. Or that’s what he calls himself, and Sam hates it because the so-called Baron ain’t no such thing and got no right to no authority anyway.

God. Titles are the least of Sam’s worries, now.

“Kate’s on block nineteen,” Billy’s voice butts into Sam’s thoughts.

Sam and Billy are perched at eighteen. Eli and his decoy team are causing chaos all the way down at one-oh-nine.

Kate waits up at the corner. In his head, Sam can imagine what the view is like, for her; from the top of St. Sebastian at the corner of the Square. He can picture the way the sunset lights up the Statue and gives it golden hair, like a crown, like whatever you would call a forest fire if it burned downtown.

“Tell her to take the first shot.”

Billy does.

And Kate does. She takes the shot and it’s clean, Sam can tell, he hears the crowd of commuters cry out in the Square, he hears the crow croak again and he wants to throttle it.

_He’s back!_

“Take the second shot.”

Redwing screeches in the distance.

“No—wait—”

But it’s too late.

_Clang!_

Sam feels it like a shock, like lightning struck the top of the fire escape and zapped through every metal rung, all the way down, fifty floors at least, and right down each rung of Sam’s spine. It’s the shock that holds him in place, must be.

“The fuck—”

Another solid bang, metal on metal, and then—gunfire.

“Dammit!” Sam barks, flattening himself against the metal ladder. “Billy, get inside!” he roars.

More gunfire.

The gentle patter of a semi-automatic.

Billy dives through a window, and Sam swings onto the platform one floor below. He rolls neatly onto the corner of the fire escape. For a moment, silence. He steals the opportunity to scan the skyline.

More gunfire rattles into the wall, four bricks away from Sam’s ear.

The noise dies out and Redwing, his little pigeon-hawk who won't eat pigeons, glides into view. She twitters, fitful and scared, and dances on her left foot, then her right foot. There’s no more shooting. Redwing ruffles her feathers and trills.

Across the street, movement catches Sam’s eye. An angry silhouette roaring across the rooftops, dashing toward the square.

Sam’s throat burns.

“Billy! Billy, get Kate out of there!”

“She’s got a clean shot!”

Redwing squawks.

“Get her out!”

“She only needs one more—”

“Billy, _now!_ ” Sam roars. “The Soldier, it’s the Soldier, he’s headed right for Kate!”

Several seconds sing by, sing like electricity trapped in ice.

Billy’s voice rolls out the window, low and warped by the walls and the wavelengths.

Sam’s rifle is hot but he’s got nowhere to aim. The figure overhead disappeared. Redwing said—she said it was the Soldier, but that can’t be right, Eli said the same thing, the Soldier should be chasing them down 109th, headed west. He shouldn’t be here. He can’t be in both places at once.

Something brushes Sam’s shoulder, and he flinches so hard he almost fires the gun. Fucking hell, it’s aimed at Billy’s chest, holy God—

“Sam?” he asks. His eyes are round and zeroed in on the barrel of Sam’s SCAR-L12.

“Sorry,” Sam whispers. “Sorry, it’s—Kate. Where’s Kate.”

“She’s in the belltower.”

“No Soldier?”

“She saw him.”

“It was him? For sure?”

“For sure.”

Sam’s ribs feel like a vice.

“He didn’t see her,” Billy adds.

The crow _brakks_ again, loud, and flies away before Sam can make sense of what she’s trying to say.

_He’s back_.

* * *

Sam’s muscles hiss with relief when Snapback Lounge comes into view. _Home sweet home_ , he thinks darkly, because it ain’t too much of a home. It was a bar, once. Two brick stories built to serve heavy drinkers and play live music. It was abandoned years ago, or decades ago, even, Sam’s not sure; he moved in just last year when government ops started to get wind of him down near the Sacramento borough. He’s been traveling north for awhile, now.

So when he sees the old bar, he’s equal parts relieved and tired.

He never knows how long he’ll get to stay.

“Teddy’s back,” Billy says softly, and his voice has the same weary edge of relief.

Sam sees them, too; as they draw closer, he can see all of them gathered on the second-floor-balcony; all of their little band of rebels and misfits. The young people of City Seven who were abandoned and disowned, at best; Experimental-Med-Department-rejects, at worst. There’s America Chavez, hands on her hips, looking ready for a pit fight as usual; Cassie Lang, who has recently died her hair hair a shocking shade of turquoise, standing off to the side, rolling her eyes so hard it must hurt; and Teddy Altman, tall and broad and painted head-to-toe with tattoos.

Kate Bishop is in the middle of it all. Her black hair falls around her face as she yells.

“I’m telling you, he was _there!_ ” she cries as Sam and Billy come within hearing distance.

“There’s _no way!_ He was chasing us down Santa Maria!” Eli Bradley shouts back. He’s much taller than Kate, but she yells taller.

“I know what the fucking Winter Soldier looks like, _Eli_ ,” she snaps.

Sam notes that her bow and all her arrows are safely strapped to her back. That’s good, at least.

“You’re fucking telling me I baited the Soldier for thirty blocks for no good reason?!” Eli cries. Teddy grabs his upper arm, but Eli shakes him off. “You guys couldn’t get anything done while we were risking our lives—”

“Oh, and we _weren’t_ risking our lives?!” Kate squawks. “Who the hell do you think climbed the tallest tower on the Square in _broad daylight?!_ ”

Sam drops into their midst before Kate has a chance to tear Eli’s throat out. “Enough, both of you!”

“Sam, what the fuck?!” Eli shouts in greeting. “I told you the Soldier was after us, why didn’t you follow through?”

“He was there, Eli, I don’t know what to tell you—”

Kate comes at him from the other side. “I could have finished, Sam!”

“I can’t risk you, Kate—”

“But I was one shot away, I could—”

“It’s too dangerous!” Sam says.

America Chavez steps forward, fire in her eyes. She yanks the army-green duffel bag out of Kate’s arms and dumps it at Sam’s feet. Red-white-and-blue folds of fabric spill out across the uneven floorboards.

“I can’t believe you didn’t do it,” Teddy growls.

Kate whirls on him. “Sam pulled me out!”

" _Enough!_ ” Sam barks. His voice is like a crow again. “This is the Winter Soldier we’re talking about. You _do not_ fuck with the Winter Soldier.”

“Well, why the hell not?” America says, arms tense, anger holding her up like a tent. “Why _shouldn’t_ we fuck with the Winter Soldier? Because no one else ever does? Because the _Baron_ tells us not to?”

“This isn’t—”

“I thought we were here to _change_ things, Sam, not do things the way we always have!”

“We are—”

“Maybe it’s _time_ someone fucked with the Winter Soldier!” she roars, hands balled into fists at her sides. “Nothing else is working!”

Silence stretches, hard as brick, between them. America stands before Sam, livid, with Kate at her side. Kate’s bow and quiver rise and fall as she pants angrily. Teddy steps up next to her and folds his arms.

Not for the first time, Sam fully realizes just how young they all are.

“You need to cool it,” he says. “All of you.”

About two of them look appropriately ashamed.

Teddy is not one of them. “We just ran like mice all over Grants neighborhood for no fuck reason.”

Eli looks up from his feet. “I told you the Soldier was after us, Billy,” he says plaintively. “What went wrong?”

“This _wasn’t_ Billy’s fault,” Sam says firmly. He’s mad, for a split, second, that Eli would even propose such a thing—Billy Kaplan is their goddamn secret weapon, Sam is the the fuck-up here, and he’ll fight anyone who suggests otherwise.

“We’ve been planning this for _weeks_ ,” Kate says. “What a fucking waste of time.”

She shoulders past Sam. Not gently. Which is within her rights. And Cassie follows her. And Teddy gives Billy a long look before they both go, too.

America and Eli stand before Sam, different as the ash and the wildfire. America looks like a sturdy bronze statue, and Eli looks like a sad puppy. Sam can hear America breathing heavily from three feet away.

She shakes her head. “This never would have happened when Riley was around.”

Fucking hell.

Fucking—

Sam sinks into a squat and buries one hand into the bundles of red, white and blue fabric. He doesn’t fully register when America leaves, but after awhile—a second?—a long cycle of the lonely moon?—after some time, Eli eases to the floor beside him. The breeze has grown cold, and they should go inside. Sam says so, or thinks he does.

“Sam?”

It’s a big flag, Sam thinks. It’s big and it would have meant something. It could still mean something.

“Sam.” Eli lays a hand on his arm. “We should go inside.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. The sun has dipped below the skyscrapers; the sky is a fog of dark, and the windows in the east light up orange and red. “Yeah. I’ll just …”

“Here,” Eli says. He gently gathers up the flag and the duffel bag, and then stretches out a hand to pull Sam to his feet.

Inside, the bar is murky. They don’t have electricity, so they usually rely on cracked old LED night lights and candles to see. It’s quiet, too.

Billy and Teddy will be upstairs; the third floor used to be a residential area, so it had a real bed and everything. It seemed right, letting them share it. Kate and America have holed up in the back rooms, which were once storage. They have windows, which is nice. Cassie chose the first floor and barricaded the front window with a stack of tables all by herself.

That left the second floor for Eli and Sam.

Eli has tucked a nest of cushions and blankets right behind the bar, and Sam sleeps out on the balcony. It’s easier for Redwing to come and go, that way, and anyway he likes the sky close by.

Now, Eli gently leads him inside out of the cool nightbreak breeze. With long careful fingers, he lays the flag across the bar next to his bed. Sam watches.

“Why stars?” Eli asks, running a hand across blue fabric and white stitches.

Sam blinks in the shadows and wonders if this is always how it goes, if Riley will keep coming up again and again until the world crumbles under Sam’s feet. Or finishes crumbling. He’s coming apart like rock sheets.

“What do you mean?” he asks, and keeps his voice soft so it doesn’t break like silt.

“Why does the flag have stars?” Eli asks. He frames one of them with his hands, spread wide on either side, and the star is the same size his his big palms, his long fingers.

He’s so tall now, Sam thinks, and he’s so much like Sam was, all those years ago.

“Sam?”

He takes a deep breath and feels his lungs fill up with it weird and uneven. “They symbolize being together. The United States. As a constellation.”

“But I didn’t think stars were real.”

Sam traces one of the white-embroidered-stars with his fingertip. “They’re real.”

“You never told us, before.”

No, Sam thinks. I told someone else.

“The stars are real.” He spread his hand over one. “There are stars in the sky, just like in the stories. The birds can see them, if they fly high enough. They told me there are stars, and every single day, there’s a moon, even when it’s just a tiny white line. It doesn’t disappear for days, like it does here.”

“Why can’t we see the stars?”

“The light from the city,” Sam sighs. He can hear his own voice, the disconnect of it, like the low murmur of doves. “And the smog, and the buildings, and the clouds. When we built these cities we put everything in the way, and now we can’t see the stars.”

The candles are dark and the corners of the room are dark and Eli’s face is dark except for the little round pinpricks of his eyes. Sam doesn’t actually know what stars look like, but he’s heard stories. Pinpricks of light. Like sprinkles, like glitter over black velvet. Like you could swipe your hand across the sky and pull it away with diamonds in the palm of your hand.

“The stars are real,” Sam says again. “There are stories … they’re supposed to make pictures.”

Eli tugs the corner of the flag. “These are just a square.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “But there are stories. Shapes in the stars. They look like animals and trees and weapons and people.”

Eli doesn’t say anything. When Sam looks at him, he feels a lot like he did a few hours ago, bullets bracketing both sides of his face. He thinks of the last time he talked about stars, and how high up he was, and how his heart beat bright and he thought he would _see_ the stars, one day. He believed it, once. It’s getting harder and harder, now, to believe they exist at all.

“The birds can see them?” Eli asks.

“The birds told me about lights in the sky,” Sam whispers. Not for the first time, he wonders if he just jumped to conclusions. Redwing told him there were lights, and he jumped to conclusions.

“They’re up there,” Eli says, his voice cutting through the fog in Sam’s brain.

“Yeah,” Sam says. He tries to smile. “We’ll see them. Someday.”

They look at the flag. It’s whole and real and a whole lot of color for their little hole in the wall home. They lose track of time, but it’s long enough for the shadows to dark the room. Long enough for the mirror behind the bar to lose its rosy evening glint. The mirror is old and cracked and it says _Snapback_ in fancy letters and now Sam can’t even read it. It’s too dark. No stars.

“Can I keep it?” Eli’s voice croaks in the night.

“Dunno what else we’ll do with it, now,” Sam sighs.

“I’m keeping it,” Eli declares.

Sam doesn’t argue. Sam can’t argue. They light a few candles so they can see, and then they shuffle through the drawers behind the bar for nails and a hammer. In the flickering firelight, Sam and Eli climb up onto the Snapback bar and nail the old American flag onto the ceiling. It’s huge, spans the length of the bar, and it’s still got full color. It’s a miracle they ever found one in such good shape, Sam thinks, laments, because it would have looked great flung across the Square for everyone to see, and it’s still here because he’s a fuck-up or because the Winter Soldier is everywhere, or both.

They drape the flag across the ceiling of the bar so it hangs over Eli’s bed and over most of the room. And later, Sam stretches across his balcony under the sky and looks up and doesn’t see a damn thing but murk and gray and Redwing’s shadow against it all.

She asks if Sam is okay, and he looks up at the sky and says, out loud, “I’m not hurt.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Alec](http://alecjmarsh.tumblr.com/) for the beta!

There’s a game playing on the TV. Highlights, Steve thinks, because Bucky always misses the games working the weekends, and he watches the highlights in bed on Monday mornings.

Steve likes Mondays, because they’re young, non-professionals with crappy night jobs while they figure out what they’re doing with their life, and Mondays are actually their Saturdays. It means Steve can sleep in, press close to Bucky while he plays on his computer, pretend all their problems are non-existent for a few hours while they watch stupid Vines with talking birds and Britney Spears dubs.

Steve rolls over, eyes still closed, and reaches for Bucky. His hand finds only empty air. He opens his eyes to austere white walls and glinting machinery. A fuzzy red glow fills his vision. He frowns, then sits up and blinks against the crust in his eyelashes. There’s a red LED strip glaring over the door frame.

The hospital room is bleach clean and mostly empty. Something that looks like a TV with three screens hangs in the corner, playing a Giants game with the volume low. There are no windows in the room, just harsh florescent lights, which Steve is used to, but damn—it’s been a long time since Steve woke up disoriented in a hospital bed.

Memory trickles back in as he looks down at the hospital gown stretched over his broad chest, his thick forearms on the bed, long legs nearly touching the metal frame. No, Bucky wouldn’t be here, not in a hospital, not like—fuck.

It’s fragmented, confusing, like trying to describe a dream. Afghanistan— _there’s a POW camp not far from the target_ _—_ Syria — _those aren’t your orders, Captain_ _—_ Iraq — _these men are planning to attack American soil_ _—_ Bucky—

Steve pushes himself out of bed, rips the IVs and the heart monitors away, and casts about the room for clothes. There’s a little bathroom adjacent, but the only thing he finds is a bathrobe made of weird papery fabric. He pulls it on anyway, ready to get out and investigate, when the door whispers open and a woman steps in.

She’s clearly not a doctor, dressed in a sharp suit and sensible heels. Her red curls are pulled into a ponytail and she’s got glasses on and a couple folders under one arm. Steve immediately thinks _agent_ and then looks closer at the way she walks, assesses him and the whole room quickly, the outline of a gun under her jacket. _Operative._

“Captain Rogers,” she says, smiling a political smile. “It’s good to see you awake. I’m Agent Natasha Romanov. I work for S.H.I.E.L.D. I’d like to debrief you as much as you’re able, right now.”

Steve watches her, wary. “Where am I?”

She settles on the edge of the bed, all practiced nonchalance, never taking her eyes off him. “A S.H.I.E.L.D hospital. We’ll get to that more, if you’ll sit down.”

He doesn’t move. “I’ll stay here.”

The woman inclines her head, but doesn’t speak.

“What happened?” Steve asks. “I was…” He pauses, thinks. The lights are giving him a headache. Or maybe that’s—the crash? He crashed.

More falls into place, pieces of information Steve shouldn’t have forgotten—he hasn’t forgotten anything since the serum, his brain processes it and stores it too thoroughly, enhanced. He can do better than this.

Somalia. Maps and briefings and classified folders. Turkey. Deserts and oceans and gunfire, gasoline and charred bodies. Kazakhstan. Steve swallows bile at the sense memory, can taste the smoke and sulfur at the back of his throat. Ukraine.

“I was in Russia,” he says slowly. “We...I crashed a plane.”

Peggy’s voice over the radio; Bucky delirious on a lab table, _I'll meet you on the other side_ ; Isaiah grappling Steve into the mud and holding him there, _I know, I know, Steve, he’s gone_. Steve grabs the edge of one of the monitors and it dents in his hand.

“Captain Rogers,” Agent Romanov says, voice soft. “Captain, you should sit down. We have a lot to discuss.”

Steve stares at her, queasy, mind reeling, and finally stumbles back to the bed. He sits next to her in his checkered hospital gown and his weirdly stiff bathrobe and digs his fingers into his knees, tries to focus. Romanov looks at him for a long moment, then goes to the bathroom. She returns with a glass of water. Steve takes it but doesn’t drink.

“Where am I?” He asks as she sits back down, clipboard on her lap.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility on the west coast,” she says. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“The plane crash,” Steve says, more confident this time.

“What year?” She asks. Steve blinks at her.

“2016,” he says finally. “I mean...how long have I been out?”

She watches him without blinking. Looks at her clipboard, sighs, sets it aside. “Captain, you’ve been asleep for a long time.”

“Asleep?” Steve says. “You mean, in a coma.”

“Of a sort.” Romanov picks up a folder and hands Steve a photograph. “This is how we found you.”

Steve looks at—a photograph of himself. Curled up on his side in his uniform in the cockpit of the plane. He’s under a layer of ice, frozen completely solid, and it forces another sense-memory harshly to the surface: trying to maintain a shield around his entire body while icy water rushes through the smashed nose of the plane; feeling the cold seeping in even before he passed out from the lack of oxygen.

Steve shudders involuntarily, trying to shake off the memory and the awful icy feeling gripping him again. Like strangling. He swallows thickly and hands the photo back to Romanov, who slips it back into her file.

“Captain,” she says gently, setting it back aside. “It’s 2376. You were frozen for over three hundred years.”

Three hundred years.

Steve blinks at her, wondering if it’s some kind of weird prank even though it doesn’t make sense for someone in her position to be pulling jokes like that. And Agent Romanov doesn’t seem like the joking type, really—when she arches her eyebrow it comes to a point. But a part of Steve clings to the idea for a long time.

 _This is a joke_.

“What?”

She picks up a different folder and settles it between them. “This is an incomplete list of things that have happened in the last three centuries. I don’t expect you’ll want to go through the whole thing right now, but—”

“No, stop,” Steve cuts her off, standing up. “Three hundred years? That’s—” he shakes his head. “What are you saying? How is that possible?”

“We can’t be sure,” she says. “The last time anyone did any tests on you was before your mission in Siberia, and because of the experimental nature of the serum you received, effects like this couldn’t have been predicted. We’ll do more tests on you later.”

She keeps talking, but the words fade into background noise while Steve just stares at her, uncomprehending. The individual words make sense, but strung together it’s like she may as well be speaking Urdu.

Steve’s mind is rebelling, rejecting the stimuli the way his body used to in elementary gym classes. He can’t bring himself to parse the words, _over three hundred years_ simply playing on repeat through his head.

“This is impossible,” Steve whispers. Romanov stops talking, watching him warily. Steve reaches for the folder sitting on the bed and flips it open. It’s got newspaper clippings and lists and printed images, piled up and clipped together. Steve flips through them, skimming headlines and images and mostly dates, heart in his throat.

“Captain, you should sit down,” Romanov says, and her voice is far away. A rushing noise fills Steve’s ears.

“Captain!”

Steve passes out.

* * *

 

When Steve comes to again, he’s back on the hospital bed, the lights dimmed, except for the searing red glow. He’s not hooked up to any monitors, and this time he lays on his back, staring at the ceiling for a long time, thinking.

Three hundred years.

It doesn’t seem possible. It’s _not_ possible. All of the evidence in the folder Romanov gave him could have been doctored. But why? What would anyone have to gain from lying about how long Steve had been out?

Psychological torture, he thinks. Bucky said something about—well. Maybe they’re playing games. He wouldn’t put it past Hydra, although it seems like an unnecessarily long game to play.

He’s not getting anywhere, laying in the bed and wondering about the why and the how. It’s either true or it isn’t, and the first thing Steve needs to do is find out.

Without moving, Steve looks around the room. He doesn’t see a camera anywhere, but that doesn’t mean anything, really. Not with S.H.I.E.L.D., not with Hydra, and _especially_ not if this is actually the future. Pulling himself up cautiously, Steve heads to the bathroom again. His clothes have been changed into S.H.I.E.L.D. sweats and a t-shirt, which is good, but he’s not wearing shoes, which is less good. Not a deal-breaker, or anything.

He leaves the bathroom and looks around the room as casually as he can. He still doesn’t see the camera, but there’s the weird three-panel TV in the corner and a clock on the bedside table; any of the electronics could be hiding cameras.

Trying not to look like he’s planning anything, Steve tries the handle of the door. It’s locked.

That’s definitely weird. Definitely not a good sign. He’s important, but not high-risk enough to lock in his own hospital room. So, before he can think too much about it and before anyone who is probably watching gets any ideas, Steve forces the door handle down with a crack and yanks the door open.

There are two guards in black tac gear outside. They start at the sound, and one of them reaches for him. Steve doesn’t wait to find out if they’re friendly, just grabs his arm and throws him into his partner. They go down in a heap and Steve takes off down the hallway towards a door with a green exit sign over it. The guards are shouting into comms behind him, but Steve blows through the door and into a stairway before he can even hear them coming after him. The stairwell is soaked with that same eerie red glow. He takes the stairs down two at a time, hears the door behind him slam open and then another below him and boots on the stairs.

Steve looks over the railing and down the spiraling staircase. The men coming from below are on the stairs between him and the next door, and they’re gaining on both sides. Steve sighs and jumps the rail, letting himself fall past them as they shout. He grabs the railing a few floors below, grunting when it jars his shoulder and hand. He’s still at least three stories up, but he swings back over the railing and starts down the stairs again, hearing the team behind him reverse direction.

They’re gaining on him by the time he makes it to the bottom floor and slams through the door. He’s expecting more teams of operatives, people with stun guns and batons, but the only person in the hallway is Agent Romanov. She has a pair of pristine white shoes in her hand. Steve skids to a halt at the sight of her, perfectly put together and unperturbed.

“If you wanted a tour, all you had to do was ask,” she tells him, lips twitching just a little.

The door behind Steve bangs open, but Romanov holds up a hand and no one touches him.

She holds out the shoes and Steve takes them, watching her as he puts his back against the wall to put them on. The tac team stands for a minute, until the leader dismisses them with a wave and steps up to Romanov. He dwarfs her in height and width, almost looming, but she never flinches.

“I can handle it, Rumlow,” she says to him.

“He’s quick,” Rumlow says, voice a low rumble. He pulls off his helmet. After a moment he grins at her, and it stretches a shiny scar on his cheek. Romanov doesn’t return it. “When are we going to get him out there?”

“When he’s ready,” she says. She turns and says, “Let’s go,” to Steve before walking down the hall.

Steve glances at Rumlow again, who gives him an appraising look. Steve feels a little like he’s being sized up for a meal.

“See you around, Cap,” he says.

Steve nods once at him and follows Romanov.

“So,” she says when he catches up to her. “Why did you run?”

“Door was locked,” Steve says. “Not exactly normal hospital procedure, is it? And I figured you had to be watching, to know when I’d woken up. Wanted to see the 24th century for myself.”

“Don’t believe me?”

“Let’s just say you wouldn’t be the first agent to lie to my face.”

That little smile again, like she’s glad he’s being snarky. “This way.”

She leads him to a lobby, but the doors don’t open to a street. Instead, they step into an enormous courtyard, hemmed on three sides by concrete buildings. The hospital isn’t even a fifth of the compound, and not close to the tallest building either. In the distance, Steve can see a fence, or maybe a wall, but it’s so far away even he can’t make it out.

“I’ll give you the facilities tour later,” Romanov says. “First, let me show you the city.”

“That seems backwards.”

She gives him another little smile, the kind that only fills a quarter of her face. “You’ll see. Come on.” She heads towards a building on their right, one that rises up and up until it disappears, vertigo built by human hands. Steve looks for the top of it, and then beyond at the thick gray clouds that obscure the sky. It’s nighttime, Steve is pretty sure, but he can’t see the stars or even a hint of the moon. He looks around again. All the light in the area is from lamps, bright white lights placed high on the buildings. Flood lamps.

“Where are we?” Steve asks.

“The west coast,” Romanov says. “You were found somewhere between Alaska and Russia. It’s a good thing it was us who found you.”

“Sure.”

Romanov smirks. “Russia’s an interesting place for a mission in the twenty-first century.”

Steve chuckles, but he can’t remember much about it yet. “Yeah,” he says, and follows her into the skyscraper. Her heels click on the shining marble floors as she heads straight past the security desk. The man there nods once at her, and eyes Steve. Romanov pulls a card from her pocket as they approach the elevators, swiping it in front of a little box. The light on it blinks from red to green, and a minute later, the doors open. They step in and Romanov selects the button for the—

“Jesus,” Steve breaths. “When did the west coast get a two-hundred story building?”

“One-seventy-three,” Romanov corrects him. “This one went up in 2214.”

Steve stares at her. “‘This one?’ There are more?”

She smiles, but it’s not a pleasant look. “You’ll see.”

The ride is quicker than Steve finds particularly pleasant or comfortable. The conversation is already leaving a sour aching fear in his chest and stomach, a feeling of terror so deep he can hardly even name it. His mind is reeling, rejecting the possibility that this is actually the 24th century and simultaneously trying to accept it. It doesn’t feel possible, but this is obviously not 2016.

The elevator finally stops and opens to an indoor observatory. There’s huge windows spanning what looks like half of the building, and beyond that …

“Welcome to City Seven,” Romanov says, following Steve to the windows.

Steve stares out at the expanse of city beyond the windows, the veins of light spidering into a distant, fuzzy glow. There’s _so much_ light, filling up the bowl of the horizon. Like someone tripped and spilled an armful of sparklers across what was once a sequoia-and-sycamore landscape. It burns Steve’s eyes, and burns yellow right into the sky.

The steel-wool clouds hang heavy over the city. They are a long, thick stick of charcoal with no shading, a swollen starless belly.

Steve remembers Brooklyn, suddenly; the silhouette of the city against a starlit sky. This is the opposite. Sizzling arches and spires and skyscrapers like porcupine-spines, they dwindle so far into the distance. The fire of fluorescent lights burning the sky away.

Steve has never seen anything so vast, so bright, and so unutterably man-made.

He can see Agent Romanov out of the corner of his eye. He thinks she’s facing him.

“City What?” Steve asks.

“City Seven.”

He presses a hand against the window. The glass is warm against his palm.

“It’s like the desert,” he blurts, nonsensically. “I mean …”

For some reason, his mind sees a flash of the Middle East; the Russian border, the heat rising, warped, from the sand. The image is there and gone just as fast.

Romanov turns to look at the cityscape. Steve can just see the rustle of her orange hair from the corner of his eye.

“I’ve never seen a desert,” she states.

“Oh.” Steve barely hears her, too overwhelmed with the new world beyond the glass. It’s beautiful and hellish, something out of the weird science fiction Bucky loved to read. Steve’s breath catches in his throat at the thought. The city blurs.

“Captain Rogers?”

“Just a minute,” Steve mutters. He leans his forehead against the glass, hoping for a cool respite, but it’s weirdly warm. Warmer than the air outside.

Romanov moves away from him, shoes nearly silent on the thick carpet, and looks out the window. Steve closes his eyes and watches the afterglow of the city burn red against his eyelids.


	3. Chapter 3

_ Light flashes. Fire leaps in the corners. Steve’s eyes burn from holding them open against the heat and bright, but they’ve made it through. Only a handful of guerilla-like forces stand in their way. Flames—movement—wild movement off to the left. Instinctively, Steve cocks his arm and hurls his shield at the shadows, and they flicker out. He hears a metallic clang, and another, and his shield ricochets back into sight. Out of reach. _

_ Gunfire. _

_ Bucky tackles Steve and flattens him to the ground. _

_ “You’re the size of a skyscraper, idiot.” He’s shouting just to be heard over the roar of battle. “Goddammit if you die trying to get us all out of here, so help me—” _

_ An explosion sends a heatwave over their shoulders, and they both duck. _

_ Steve looks up, his cells tingling, precarious, swerving around the curve of a mountain road; he looks up and the smoke clears; he looks up and sees his own shield. _

_ Steve raises his sidearm just as Isaiah Bradley’s eyes peek around the red and white stripes. _

_ Bucky relaxes in a heap on the ground. Rolling his eyes, Steve pushes himself to his feet. _

_ Steve exhales. “You scared the shit out of me.” _

_ “This thing isn’t so bad,” Isaiah says, hefting the shield a little, testing its weight. It looks light and easy in his hands. “I could get used to it.” _

_ “Looks good on you.” _

_ “I’m not here to steal nobody’s job.” Isaiah switches it from his left hand to his right, then back to his left, then spins it around and holds it out to Steve. _

_ Steve gives him a look. It really does suit him, after all. “We should practice some moves.” _

_ Isaiah laughs. “Yeah, yeah, maybe,” he says with a small smile. “What you think?” he asks, turning to Bucky. _

_ Bucky doesn’t answer right away; he’s scanning the horizon through the sight on his rifle. “Mm?” he says absently. _

_ “What you think, Barnes?” Isaiah asks again. He holds the shield up and makes a face. “You think I look like Captain America?” _

_ “I think that shield looks like a target,” Bucky says drily. _

_ Isaiah and Steve both laugh. _

_ “But you don’t look like as much of a clown as Steve, here,” Bucky adds. _

_ “Hey!” _

_ “You guys should both practice with that trash can lid,” Bucky goes on, nodding at the shield. “Then we could have a whole squad of Captain Americas.” _

_ “You want a turn?” Isaiah asks, holding out the shield. _

_ “Hell no,” Bucky says. He tucks his gun under his elbow, apparently satisfied with the lack of enemy troops within range. “It’s all yours.” _

_ Isaiah spins it around and hands it over to Steve. Hell, Isaiah could keep it if he wanted, Steve won’t need it much longer—but that’s still a secret between him and Erskine, so he takes the shield and hooks it to the straps on his back. “You just think it looks dorky,” Steve says, following Bucky toward their base camp. _

_ “True.” _

_ “You’d be good at it though,” Steve says. _

_ “He’s right, you have better aim than any of us,” Isaiah agrees. _

_ Bucky tosses a look over his shoulder, half-rolling his eyes. “That can be a project for the distant future.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year! sorry about the long breaks between chapters. love you all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Super soldier reintegration.

Steve spends the next few days re-learning how to walk.

Well, not literally, but that sure is how it feels, considering the kid-gloves all the med-staff treat him with.

Just a day after waking up, Steve meets a skittish physician who seems like the human embodiment of wire-rimmed glasses and has the conversational skill to match. He shows Steve a handful of wireless electrodes. Steve thinks of insects. The doctor hooks them up to Steve’s joints and other seemingly random places on his body.

“Are these for heart rates, and stuff?” Steve asks.

No answer.

“I mean—I feel normal.”

Silence.

“My body’s doing okay, right?” Steve prods. “After the whole … freezer burn thing.”

Nothing.

Over the doctor’s shoulder, Agent Romanov rolls her eyes. “You look like you’re in one piece, to me,” she says, and herds Steve to the next room.

Instantly, he feels like he stepped into a YMCA aboard the Starship Enterprise.

He says so out loud, but no one laughs. The door whisks shut behind them.

Agent Romanov clears her throat. “Some easy cardio, to start.”

For the record, Steve doesn't feel like he spent three centuries frozen under a polar ice cap. His body seemed to cooperate just fine during his half-baked escape-attempt in the hospital, but then again, it will be nice to know just how well super-serum-enhanced cells hold up after several centuries.

Steve approaches the equipment, then hesitates. It all looks a little Asimov. Lots of brushed metal plating.

“Cardio?”

Romanov nods at the nearest machine. It’s a sleek 6-foot platform in matte copper, with a smooth black runway—like a very expensive treadmill, but without the apparatus at the front where all the meters should go.

“So I just…?” Steve toes the platform.

“Step on and start walking,” Romanov instructs. “Or jogging—but not too fast. Give it a minute to figure out your weight and step pattern.”

“Figure out my … Whoa.” Steve slips a little as the platform whirs to life under his feet.

“ _Welcome, new user_.” A cool automated voice sounds as little lights blink around the edges of the machine.

“Oh,” Steve stumbles a little. “Hi.”

“Oh, yeah,” Romanov says without an ounce of surprise. “It’s also voice-activated.”

Steve smiles at her. She raises an eyebrow.

He can’t quite tell if she is teasing or testing him.

“So, Siri is in treadmills, now?” Steve jokes.

Romanov licks her lips, but doesn’t smile. Her eyes slide dully over Steve’s shoulder.

“Right,” he says. “Sorry. Just a little 21st-century humor for you.”

Her eyes are sharp again when she looks back at Steve. “You’re showing your age, old man.” Her little half-lipped smirk is back.

“I’m not old,” Steve counters, grinning. “I’m experienced.”

Steve runs a half-marathon while Agent Romanov spends thirty minutes scrolling through a handheld device Steve can’t see. From his viewpoint, it looks like fresh sheet of paper, it’s so thin.

She doesn’t seem to be taking notes, though; when he stops for a break, she holds up an index finger while she finishes reading something before giving Steve any attention. Romanov is an agent, though, not a doctor. The little insectlike electrodes are probably doing all the monitoring he needs.

When Romanov looks up, she has one eyebrow arched inquiringly.

“Well,” Steve pants, feeling a little surprised by his own ramped-up heartbeat. “I think I’m tired.”

The other eyebrow goes up.

 

The next morning, Romanov wakes Steve up with a trayfull of pills, a glass of water, and something that looks like a bluetooth earpiece, if it were designed by a Batman villain.

“You’ve been cleared for a mobile phone,” Romanov says briskly, nodding at the device. “You’ll only be able to contact people on this floor, for now.”

Steve points at the pills. “I’m more worried about the, uh, controlled substances, here.”

“They’re safe.”

Steve picks one up and inspects the rounded edges; the tricolor sugar-coating.

Romanov doesn’t elaborate.

“Not that I don’t trust you,” Steve says, setting the pill back down; “but …”

“But you don’t trust me,” Romanov finishes for him with a smile.

Steve can’t tell if she’s pleased or annoyed. He rubs his eyes and sits on the edge of his bed. They still haven’t moved him out of the little hospital room, but at least the strip of light over the door is green, now. Steve is pretty sure that means it’s unlocked. Not positive, though. He sighs. “I feel like there’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

Romanov doesn’t move; she looks down at Steve, a narrow-eyed statue with every marble hair in place. Steve looks back at her. She’s only a few inches taller than him when he sits down, but he doesn’t feel like he’s in the room with a small woman.

Without speaking, without making even a whisper of noise, Romanov places the copper tray in Steve’s lap.

She points at the tricolor pill. “This one is to rebuild muscle mass,” she says softly. Her finger slides over to a smaller white pill. “This one is similar to an SSRI.” One at a time, she points at each pill and describes it. “Painkiller. Daily vitamin. Another vitamin, adjusted for your enhanced metabolism. And this is Savannah Anti-Virus, which primarily prevents onset of the 23rd century plague.”

Steve watches her hand move across the tray. When she stops speaking, he blinks up at her. For a moment, they look at each other, and Steve can practically see the calculations ticking across her face. Or maybe he’s just projecting.

“Plague,” he says slowly.

“The 2200s were a rollercoaster,” she says lightly.

“Good thing anti-vaxxers aren’t a thing anymore, I guess.”

“Oh, they are,” Romanov says, standing up straight and crossing her arms. “No one vaccinates anymore. SAVI is only available through the government’s private medical corporation.”

Steve’s jaw drops. He tries to mask it as a yawn.

“Yeah,” Romanov says with a knowing look. “It’s all pretty boring.”

 _Right_.

There’s more to it, of course. But Steve thinks of cameras and strangers and the 24th century and he can tell, looking up at Romanov’s bright eyes and unnatural hair color, that she’s giving him an inch, here.

“You take any of these?”

She cocks her head. “Most of them.”

Steve picks up a pair of pills and swallows them both with water. “Right. More training today?”

“Wait til you see the lat-boards.”

 

It only takes a couple days for Steve to work his way through the fancy future workout equipment. Honestly, he could have tried it all in a few hours, but Romanov keeps relaying instructions from doctors to _take things slow_. Steve follows their directions, even though he feels like he’s holding back.

The third time Romanov instructs him to remove weights from his machine, Steve has to calm himself with a deep breath.

“I feel fine, you know.”

Romanov’s eyes drift to the mirror on the opposite wall. “Doctor’s orders.”

Steve blinks slowly. He looks at her eyes, at the mirror, and at the rows of polished workout equipment. He looks at the heavy bag hanging from the ceiling, smooth and black, like it’s never been touched.

“How about something a little more old-fashioned?” he blurts.

Before Romanov or her tablet can answer, he strides over to the punching bag and gives it a little push. He strikes it a few times.

“Rogers.”

“What can I say?” Another jab from the left, then the right. “I miss the good old days.” And with that, he rears back and throws his weight into a roundhouse-kick.

With a screech and a clang, the chain comes loose from the ceiling—sand sprays the pristine floor and the nearby treadmill—and the punching bag crashes through the mirrored wall. The glass shatters, sprinkling the floor with sparkling dust. When the last pane of glass bursts across the floor, Steve smiles through the hole in the wall. Half-a-dozen doctors gaze back at him with round eyes.

“Can’t believe they didn’t improve on 2-way-mirrors,” Steve says, grinning. “It’s been three hundred years, after all,” he tsks.

Romanov ducks, hiding the bottom half of her face behind her paper thin tablet.

 

After that, Steve gets more face-time with his team of doctors. They ask him questions about his health, his serum, his enhanced strength and speed. He waits for them to ask about the shield, and waits. But no. They only ask about his physical abilities.

Steve runs and lifts for hours at a time while several doctors and Agent Romanov watch. They take notes on his physical condition, his brain waves, his appearance. They take measurements and ask him endless questions about what he knows about the serum and the procedure and his abilities.

It’s almost like they don’t have any information on how Steve had become what he is. But when he finally asks a doctor why they didn’t know the answer to their own question—“Isn’t that in my file?”—they brush him off. He shoots a look at Agent Romanov in the corner. She doesn’t even look up from whatever she’s reading on her little tablet—the one that is white, and barely thicker than a piece of paper.

Steve files all of it away and answers the question.

When he is deemed healthy, they award him a new room in the tower Romanov had shown him to the top of. He’s on the seventy-third floor, and the view is...disconcerting. In daylight, City Seven is a gray scab spreading as far as Steve can see, cracked and ugly. Steve is a city boy, born and bred in Brooklyn, grew up roaming New York City, and he hates this place. It’s disturbing, how much city there is.

Romanov had told Steve, when he’d finally peeled himself away from the window the first night, that because of the population growth, all the cities in the country were like that. Of course, “all the cities” was only about nine, all of them enormous scars on the landscape just like this one.

That hadn’t been what she’d said. She’d just called them cities, explained that Seven stretched from the Canadian border to Fresno, from the coast to the Cascades. The others are just as big, or bigger. The thought makes Steve sick.

The view from his window is only slightly better at night. The city loses it’s drab gray tinge, lit up bright orange and yellow. From his rooms, Steve can’t see the millions of people he imagines swarming below. The windows don’t open, and no sound from the city permeates the rooms Steve keeps dark and silent while he stares at the future.

There isn’t much downtime anyway. Steve is kept busy for several days with the medical and physical testing, and then they start him playing catch-up.

On his fourth day of workouts, the doctor hooks monitors up to Steve’s upper body and releases him into the spacious gym, as always. It still seems space-agey and strange. And empty. Romanov is good company, but quiet company, and the longer Steve is awake, the more he finds himself alone in his own head. Its visions, its ghosts.

Steve glances at the treadmill and the other machinery with new, futuristic, forgettable names. “This isn’t very practical, is it?” he asks, half-joking, half-wistful.

Romanov’s eyes drift across the opposite wall and its floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

“How do you feel about sparring?” she asks.

“Well—you—just—”

With a carefree look at the mirrored wall, Agent Romanov whisks Steve out of the room and into the hallway. They pass banks of green lights, red lights, pure white lights that make Steve trip on his own shadows.

She leads him to an elevator, a brief descent, and another corridor of multicolored lights.

“I’ve never been to this floor,” Steve says absently. Romanov doesn’t answer.

She buzzes down the hallway, and Steve trots at her heels. When she stops, he almost bowls her over.

She asks, “Are you looking for something more practical?”

Steve thinks of Isaiah Bradley, when he used to practice with the shield; he thinks of Rumlow; _When are we going to get him out there?_ ; he thinks of Bucky; right and left, front and back. He always thinks of Bucky, though. He will think of Bucky until the world collapses around him and even then. Even then.

He looks down, half a breath away from Natasha Romanov. She looks up at him, and her eyelashes almost brush his chin.

“You alright, Captain?”

Her eyebrow comes to a point.

“Agent,” he breathes. And he takes a step back.

Without taking her eyes off Steve, Romanov presses her thumb to a raised pad mounted on the wall. An automatic door slides open and a rush of air escapes from inside.

It’s like entering a strange interior lobby; the room has white carpeting, white walls, weird blank white paintings on the walls, and white armchairs. A broad white desk faces them, and beyond that, a glass wall with mirrored doors that make the room look twice as big.

The young man behind the desk looks up when they enter. His eyes linger over Steve for a moment, and then flick to Agent Romanov. He glances down at something on his desk.

“Director Hill is in there now,” he tells them. “You can go in when she’s done.”

They wait. Romanov doesn’t sit, so neither does Steve. He wants to ask questions, but also feels like his voice would contaminate the pristine white lobby; so he keeps his mouth shut and his eyes open.

The man behind the desk has freckles and red hair. Steve can’t see any signs of a computer, but he can see some kind of electronic reflection in the young man’s glasses. Maybe he has a one of those ultrathin tablets.

The silence stretches uncomfortably. Steve can feel his muscles tense around his bones.

Finally, the mirrored doors make a hissing noise, and the reflection wobbles.

A tall woman in black tac gear steps into the room, scrubbing a hand through her short black hair. “Natasha! You caught me!” she says with a smile. She turns, and her gaze falls on Steve. For a split second, her eyes go round; and then her face is smooth and expressionless again. “Captain Rogers. What a surprise.”

“We’re here to show him some new training options,” Romanov says.

“Already?”

“Well,” Romanov says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “He’s been getting bored.”

“ _He’s_ been getting bored?”

“We’re just going at his pace.”

The black-haired woman rolls her eyes. “Be honest. You just want to shoot some robots.”

Romanov wiggles her eyebrows, but doesn’t answer. Instead, she straightens her shoulders and turns to Steve. “Captain Rogers, this is Maria Hill. She is the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., which means she secretly spends all her time shooting robots while we do her paperwork.”

Steve grins and shakes Director Hill’s hand.

“Don’t listen to her,” Hill says. “You won’t have to do my paperwork.” She releases his hand and winks. “You’ll have your own. Especially if you kick more heavy bags through mirrors.”

“That too,” Romanov confirms.

Steve senses he’s missing at least half of the joke that’s happening, here. “Nice to meet you, Director.”

“And you too, Captain Rogers.”

They watch her leave. More questions blossom in Steve’s head and then wither on his tongue.

“We almost never see her down here,” Romanov explains, even though he didn’t ask out loud. “She has an office suite on one hundred.”

“Floor one hundred.”

Romanov smiles. “She also has the only window that opens in the whole building.”

Steve blinks. “That’s …”

“Yeah.”

“So,” he says, squirming at all the implications. “She has a window, but not her own training facility?”

“Not like this,” Romanov says, and maybe, just maybe, Steve can detect a genuine smile. She opens the mirrored door and waves Steve through.

“Welcome,” she says, striding into a vast empty space, “to System X.”

Steve steps into the room and gazes into its distant corners; across the chrome floor tiles. He squints against the bright reflection of lights on polished metal. He doesn’t see any signs of a _system_ —just a gaping, empty, silver room. He blinks hard. Three football fields would probably fit in this thing.

Steve inhales. “System what?”

“System X,” Romanov repeats. “Named for the man who developed it in 2249. It was highly advanced for its time, obviously.”

“What am I missing?”

“It was based off of virtual reality technology of the time period.” She crosses to the corner of a room, where a rack of weapons sits mounted to the wall. She presses her thumb to this one, as well. “System X runs simulated combat situations in a controlled environment.”

“Oh shit,” Steve whispers. He looks over his shoulder and braces himself.

“Simulation one-two-five-oh,” Romanov calls out in a clear voice.

And just like that, the entire room morphs into a city street. The panels on the floor and walls unfold in beautiful geometric waves faster than Steve’s eyes can follow. Buildings soar overhead, fire hydrants bloom underfoot, a gritty gutter spins to the opposite end of the room, threaded with sparkling rainwater.

“... Oh _shit_.”

Any signs of the previously empty room are gone. There are weird, flickering neon signs and space-agey podlike cars scattered along the street and buildings with perfectly round windows going up and up and disappearing into mist. Steve feels like he stepped right out the front door.

And there’s movement in the ground-floor windows.

“Romanov …?”

“You ready?”

“We on the same team?”

She shows her teeth, and looks happier than he’s ever seen her look.

She tosses him a firearm. Distantly, it resembles the rifles he trained with at bootcamp. There are other influences too, though: weird quirks from Howard’s old prototypes, two triggers, a clip that sends Steve through a brief, jarring flashback to the Russian border.

“Rogers?”

Steve blinks, and for a split second, he’s surprised to see Romanov’s face instead of Bucky’s.

“Shall we?” she prompts.

Bucky is gone. Bucky has been gone. He shouldn’t do this without Bucky, he never should have, but.

Steve eyes his gun. “You gonna tell me how to use this thing?”

“Safety; scope; detachable silencer.” Romanov rattles off the names as she points to them. “The front trigger is long range. The back trigger is short range.”

“Makes sense,” Steve says, frowning at the single-barrel system. “I guess.”

“Don’t worry yourself to death.” She holds up a pistol and aims across the street. “The bullets are simulated, too.”

She pulls the trigger and fires, and a very realistic-sounding scream spills from the shopfront window.

“Right,” Steve breathes out. _This_. This is something else. This isn’t lifting weights below your abilities and going for light indoor jogs. He breathes in and clicks off the safety. The weapon is light in his hands. He wonders if all rifles are like this, now, or if it’s just because it’s a training device.

Bullets spatter over his shoulder. He ducks and rolls behind a pod-car with spherical wheels. Romanov crouches behind the next car. She catches his eye.

“Stop hostiles from reaching S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters,” she says. “Avoid civilian casualties as best you can.”

Steve frowns a little. As best he can? “You mean, _at all costs,_ right?”

Romanov gives him something between a nod and a shrug, and then she darts out from behind the car towards the nearest building. Gunfire follows her, and Steve can see the bullets, see the explosions of concrete dust when they hit buildings or the ground, and it’s hard to remember that they’re fake. He looks down and finds his hands clenched around the gun, knuckles white.

He takes a deep breath and relaxes his grip, then ducks his head out from behind the car to return fire.

There are five men advancing on him in a point, guns raised. They’re dressed in what looks like casual clothing with combat boots. They’re in black fitted pants, short sleeves, gloves, all trimmed in bright highlighter colors. They appear to be dressed for warm weather, except they all have thick scarves wrapped around their necks, covering the bottoms of their faces. They remind Steve of the hipsters in that little corner coffee shop he used to frequent, and to which he dragged a complaining Bucky whenever they had down time together. These scarves are in bright neons, though, not plaid and paisley. Plus they’re all carrying guns. The coffee-shop-hipsters never had AK-47s or ammo strapped to their back, at least not that Steve could see.

The memory makes Steve hesitate long enough that they fire on him. He ducks behind the car again and feels his heart-rate spike. He sucks in another breath through his teeth and sees Romanov lean around the building and take one out before jumping back as they return fire.

“So what’s our objective, again?” Steve calls.

Romanov heaves a sigh and sprints back across the street, rolling neatly to Steve’s side behind the car. This time, Steve doesn’t flinch at the gunfire that follows her, but he does have to shut his eyes against the panic creeping in.

“Stop the terrorists from reaching S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters,” she repeats, shifting up just enough to look through the car windows.

“ _Terrorists?_ ”

“They’re attacking public spaces, Rogers.” She shoots him a _look_ _—_ he can’t describe it, just a pointy eyebrow and a pointed snap of an ammo clip.

“How do I tell the civilians and … others apart?”

“Civilians don’t shoot _back_ ,” Romanov grunts, sending a spray of bullets through a car window.

“I don’t want to risk hitting the wrong people,” Steve says firmly. He mimics her look up, clocks a few on lower rooftops and fire escapes searching for the two of them through scopes. He can’t tell any shadows apart.

Romanov grabs a fistful of Steve’s T-shirt and yanks him down to her. “Then I hope you have good aim,” she says firmly. And with that, she dashes out again, dodges a wave of automatic fire, and somersaults behind another one of the little pod-cars.

Steve’s blood pumps, just like it always does in a warzone, just like the pounding bass of bad dubstep cranked through giant subwoofers. This is weird, weird, weird—the system, the simulated terrorists, the very real sounding gunfire and his own reaction. He knows this feeling and breathes into it, and ducks back around the car.

The bricks over his shoulder spit shrapnel across the corner of his vision. He doesn’t flinch. He holds up his rifle and aims—”Rogers!”—the person in his sight aims right back—”Rogers!”—her hair is black, so black it’s almost purple, and she has a thick scarf pulled over the bottom half of her face—” _Rogers!_ ”—his scope is crystal clear, like watching an enemy take aim in IMAX—Steve fires.

The woman drops to the ground and Steve sucks in another breath, dragging his scope across the street to a new target.

“Rogers, what the hell are you doing?!”

Romanov’s voice is far away and barely registers. She doesn’t sound panicked, she’s not in pain, so Steve stays focused on his target. Another rebel terrorist aims back at him from a shop window, zoomed in, full color. Everything is quieter, tuned out, distant.

“Rogers!” his partner barks, jumping out from behind the car just as the enemy in his sights tenses up.

He swings his left arm in front of Agent Romanov and throws up a shield.

The bullet clatters harmlessly to the sidewalk.

Looking blank and shocked and storm-thrashed, Agent Romanov pants at his side. She stares, round-eyed, at the bullet lying before them. It’s the most emotion Steve has seen her show. Her eyes drift to the shield Steve has conjured in front of her, glinting and shimmering like a mirage under the dull artificial light. Romanov turns to gaze at Steve. Her mouth is open and her chest rises and falls, breathing heavily.

“What did you just do?”

“I saved your ass, is what I did.”

She swallows slowly. “Simulation one-two-five-oh, power down.”

The colors around them fade, as if the city’s pigments are bleeding through the cracks of the sidewalk. Then the buildings fold up upon themselves, into nothing, into empty space that Steve can’t follow. In a matter of seconds, all that is left behind is Steve, Agent Romanov, and his flimsy shield, just a basic medallion to protect the two of them—almost invisible—pale cerulean when it catches the light. The bullets—so real when they were flying at Steve and bouncing off his shield—are gone.

“What is that?” Romanov breathes.

Steve shrugs. “It’s my shield.”

“You know,” she says, “this changes everything.”


	5. Chapter 5

_ Redwing is just a little thing, she takes up no space at all and looks like a flake of charcoal up in the slate-gray sky. Can’t even see her red wings. _

I have red wings, _ she confirms. _

_ Sam chuckles. He doesn’t know if she can hear him laugh from all the way up in the clouds, but the sentiment will get through the same.  _

_ They’re almost home, luckily. It’s unsafe to travel by rooftop, but Sam risks it to be close to his little falcon.  _

_ Redwing’s silhouette grows as she wheels out of the sky. Sam can see their cast iron balcony from here, and the stick-spray of Redwing’s nest, and the street-sketch American flag spray-painted on the wall. Riley hasn’t produced any new art in the last few weeks, but his graffiti is legendary. _

I like his pictures, _ Redwing offers. _

Yeah, _ Sam thinks, just for Redwing;  _ me too.

_ Couple minutes later he drops onto the balcony with a clang. Riley’s there right inside the window, wrapped in a leather jacket, crouched next to the radio, one hand on the outstretched antenna. He doesn’t even look up when Sam arrives. _

_ “You should be more careful,” Sam kids. _

_ Riley looks up and his face is sober, like ready-to-riot sober. “We have a message from the Widow.” _

_ Sam stares a sightless stare for several seconds.  _

_ “Sam?” _

_ “You sure it’s her?” Sam asks, every word falling out even though the back of his throat feels numb. “It’s been six months.” _

_ Riley runs a fingers across the top of their radio, writing a bright line in the dust. “It was our frequency,” he shrugs. “She gave both passwords.” _

_ “Well,” Sam grates, “it’s about fucking time. Did you ask why it’s been _ _ —” _

_ “She has a hit in the orphanage,” Riley cuts him off. _

_ And it’s not fair because Sam hates being interrupted but the tone of Riley’s voice says this isn’t an interruption; this is an alarm. _

_ “What?” Sam asks. _

_ “The orphanage,” Riley says, tracing the same little line in the dust, backwards. “Your orphanage.” _

_ That’s it, then. Now Sam can hear the sirens. _

_ “Oh,” he says, and his voice staggers a bit, to match his feet. _

_ “I know.” Riley moves like dancing, standing up smooth and ready with a hand and a steady stance. He hasn’t touched Sam yet, but the concern creases around his eyes. _

_ Redwing is there too, landed light on the rail. She twitters, like a cat-purr, telling Sam she’s there. _

_ “The same system?” Sam asks, just to confirm, just because he doesn’t have the air for nothing else. _

_ Riley nods. “A Black boy named Bradley.” _

_ Doesn’t ring a bell, right off. But Sam’s brain is a little bit fuzzy so that’s not fair; Bradley. Bradley. Bradley. It sounds like Riley, that’s all that comes up in the fog. Finally, finally, Riley reaches for Sam, the long fingers of his long hands twining to his own, pulling him in by the elbow. Long fingers of his long hands squeezing tight, enough to trigger pressure in his wrist; then enough for Sam’s bones to click. _

_ Sam blinks. _

_ Riley’s there, so there and so real, and that clicks.  _

_ And then the name clicks, too. _

_ “Oh, God,” Sam says. “Bradley.” _

_ “Yes.” _

_ “As in  _ Isaiah _ Bradley?” _

_ “The same Bradley.” _

_ “... Oh, God.” _

_ People tell stories about that name, tell stories until they’re myths and legends. The government can have their Captain America, and they can sell him how they want, and they can build as many statues as money can buy. The streets have their own Captain. Passed down through years, passed down through stars. If this kid is really. If this kid. _

_ “We have to get him out,” Sam whispers. _

_ “We will.” _

_ “I can get him out.” _

_ “I know you can.” _

_ Sam starts a little. His sight comes back and clears up, and he gazes at Riley. Here they are in their little bunker, an old abandoned studio with a mattress and rickety wooden furniture, here they are in jeans and jackets and nothing on their backs. They don’t have shit and they don’t have no business starting rescue missions, but that’s how it goes, right? You’re never ready. You’re never ready until you are. _

_ “Ready?” Sam asks. _

_ “To send those pigs a message?” Riley grins. “Always.” _

_ Sam strides across the room, sweeps his jacket off the back of a chair, and tugs it on, already half-way to the window. _

_ “Wait,” Riley catches him by the arm. Sam spins a little. “When is the last time you slept?” _

_ Sam groans. “When’s the last time  _ you _ slept?” _

_ “I asked you first!” _

You should sleep, _ Redwing adds helpfully. _

_ “Don’t take his side!” Sam barks. _

_ “Even your bird can tell you are tired.” _

_ Sam throws up his hands and isn’t even sorry about the theatrics. “Why you gotta gang up on me now?” _

_ “Sammy,” Riley says, softer around the edges, soft to match the hazy glow of sunset, soft to match the way his dark hair hangs in wisps around his eyes. Low fucking blow, all of it. “Sammy, you can’t save anybody if you are sick.” _

_ Riley offers his hand, and Sam takes it. He looks up and thinks about the unfairness of this beautiful, stupid man, with white lights in his eyes and dark circles beneath. _

_ Sam sighs and thinks how-the-hell-I’m-gonna-satisfy-this-guy-with-an-answer, or maybe just distract him. _

_ In the end he’s honest. It’s always easiest, and easier with Riley. _

_ “I’m  _ never _ gonna sleep knowing that kid is locked up in the system.” _

_ Riley takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “I know.” He looks down. “It was worth a try.” _

_ Sam frowns, then rolls his eyes. “So we’re going?” _

_ “The guns are loaded.” _

_ What a goddamn—ugh. Sam shoves him for good measure, to prove his displeasure, and follows it up with a hug. Just throws his arms around Riley’s neck and holds him in. “You’re a bad influence, Reyes.” _

_ Riley’s chest vibrates, warm and safe, when he laughs, and Sam can just about feel his heart pumping liquid sunlight. He leans back a little so he can see Riley’s face, so he can see him smile, and so he can smile back.  _

_ “We will sleep later,” Riley grins. _

_ “No rest for the wicked.” _

_ “No hay paz para los impíos.” _

_ Sam reaches up with both hands to brush the hair out of Riley’s face. So he can see him better and feel the soft strands between his fingers. Before the moment escapes, he leans in again and kisses Riley and holds them there like he won’t ever have to let go. And he needs to breathe, but that ain’t worth breaking a kiss. They’re both on the same page and burning up from the bottom of their boots. _

_ A Black boy named Bradley. _

_ “Fuck,” Sam exhales against Riley’s lips. _

_ “I don’t think we have time for that.” _

_ Sam snorts. He gives Riley’s hair a playful little tug. “Gettin’ kinda scruffy,” he teases. “Starting to look like the homeless guy you really are.” _

_ “Ah.” Riley’s whole face curls with a smile. He turns his head and presses his mouth to Sam’s palm. “I am not homeless,” he murmurs the words against Sam’s lifeline: “I have you.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at that, updating within a month!!! slow and steady. to those of you following the updates, we love you, you are so strong and so brave. and to the people commenting, wowowow, thank you x10000. <3
> 
> eta: yes i quoted isaiah, yes i'm a dork, yes it was too easy.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve gets a little fresh air. Meets new people, in person and on camera.

Three of Steve’s doctors are in the System X waiting room. They have hungry looks on their faces, eyes gleaming. They look at Steve like something in a petri dish. The boy behind the desk is hunched over slightly, not making eye contact with anyone. Steve sighs.

“I guess that wasn’t in my file either?” he says.

He and Romanov follow the doctors back to medical, where they ask Steve to strip, and affix the silver insectlike monitors to his torso and his head. Then they ask Steve to demonstrate the shield while they scan him.

Asking sounds a lot more like a demand and Steve forces himself to breathe cold air into the back of his throat.

“You never mentioned all this,” a doctor says while Steve manipulates his metaphysical shield in front of them.

Steve lets it disappear and shrugs. “You didn’t ask.”

A different doctor comes over, wielding a needle for another blood draw, and Steve holds out his arm and stares at the top of the man’s shiny head. He isn’t sure he knows any of their names. He probably couldn’t pick any of them out of a lineup. He could be seeing different ones every day and he’s not sure he would know, the way their faces run together, all dressed in the same uniform—lab coats, glasses, weird ID. The women have their hair in buns, the men are balding.

The doctor he’d been talking to huffs and walks away when Steve doesn’t offer any more info. The one taking his blood straightens up after a moment and walks away as well, leaving Steve alone on the table. Romanov stands at the door, apparently deeply interested in the firearm she smuggled out of System X.

A few minutes pass, and Steve finally clears his throat. All of the doctors look up, and one of them waves a hand. “You’re free to leave.”

“That’s it?” Steve asks.

“For now,” she says.

“We need to reanalyze the blood samples with this new information,” a different one says around an accent Steve can’t identify. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Not like I’m _going_ anywhere,” Steve says. One of the doctors glances up from her work with a little frown. He shouldn’t have said it, probably, but he’s tired of being left in the dark, tired of the little games everyone is playing that he doesn’t even know the rules to. He’s a soldier; he doesn’t do political puzzles and spying.

Romanov swoops in, eyes on Steve, and reaches for the little electrodes attached to his temples. “We can do more tomorrow,” she enunciates clearly. “How about mess for lunch? It’s over in the barracks.”

Steve nods, pulling off the last little monitor. Romanov smiles again when he meets her eyes, and Steve realizes she’s throwing him a life preserver, here.

“I’ve been missing barracks food,” he jokes.

Romanov’s grin widens and she steers him away from the physicians. When they reach the doorway, Steve looks over his shoulder.

“Let me know what you find in those blood tests,” he says, every word carved in concrete. “And, you know, ask as many questions as you like.” He sidles through the door. “If you know what to ask.”

Romanov rolls her eyes and punches a screen on the wall so that the door slides shut.

“What?” Steve asks innocently.

“You need to work on your poker face,” she says, without a hint of inflection.

“Why?” he challenges. “Because everyone else has perfected theirs to an art form?”

“Give them a break,” she says, gentler. “You surprised them.” The elevator door beeps open. Natasha steps inside and turns to look at Steve. “You surprised _me_.”

It’s a compliment, Steve can tell. He’s still not sure how much it means to him.

She’s trying to placate him. Steve probably shouldn’t have kicked that heavy bag through their mirror. He can still remember the frightened little looks on the doctor's faces, though. Makes him smile.

Steve wonders idly if Director Hill was being serious about the paperwork.

* * *

 The barracks rest opposite the tower, across a vast courtyard constructed mostly of concrete angles and decorative marble spheres. Little patches of pristine grass freckle the square, perfect little circles and squares of green. Upon closer inspection, Steve realizes it’s artificial turf.

“Doesn’t rain much, here?” he asks, lingering next to a patch of plastic grass.

“Hm?”

Steve does a little twirl and jogs after Romanov. “Nothing.”

The barracks loom before them. They are only three stories tall, but the broad facade looks as if it must hide a deep interior. Clouds hang sluggish overhead, dark and heavy, as Steve and Romanov make their way across the yard. The air is stagnant and hot and damp, clinging. Romanov barely sweats, but Steve’s shirt starts to stick to him after just a minute. He’s not sure how far north or west they are, but it’s not the kind of weather he expects from the Pacific Coast.

The interior of the barracks isn’t as carefully climate-controlled as the tower, but it’s still cooler than outdoors, less damp. There’s no little reception area, just white hallways winding away into the building and sterile stairways traveling up to more halls. Romanov leads Steve down one fluorescent hall, past formal photos of men and women in commander’s stripes with little plaques next to them. She stops at a door halfway down.

“There’s a little museum that way,” she says, pointing further down the hall. “I can give you the full tour later.”

Steve nods, but doesn’t move. The photos melt into a winding thread, spinning down the white walls. The nearest pictures are pristine, like glass, a strange sort of three-dimensional image captured in high definition. It’s like looking in a mirror at the wrong face.

The first is Maria Hill, serene and severe and lifelike. Steve doesn’t recognize the rest of the people, but underneath each image, an LED hologram displays a name.  

Steve’s fingers twitch. How do you create something like this, he wonders, his fingers wonder; is it like taking a photo, or compiling video? Is it some kind of art?

Five, six, seven, ten, fifteen images like this. They go back decades, almost a century, and Steve wanders after them, travels back in time until he reaches a glossy painting. Opulent and stylized. The nameplate underneath reads _Norman Osborn_. Steve’s hand stretches to the frame and traces the gold gilding there.

“Rogers?”

“These are S.H.I.E.L.D. leaders?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“What does S.H.I.E.L.D. do, exactly?”

“It’s an intelligence agency.”

Which means nothing to Steve’s army brain, but okay. “That doesn’t really tell me what they _do_.”

“We,” Romanov corrects him.

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“What _we_ do.”

Steve inhales. He looks up at the Osborn painting. Beyond it hang a short string of paintings, all rich and over-the-top and trimmed in fat gold frames. There are a half-dozen of these painted portraits, and beyond them, crystal-clear photographs on a strangely glossy surface; beyond that hang an anachronistic handful of black-and-whites. The style of headshots begins to vary, after that. Well— _before_ that, of course. The hallway is a tour through history.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is a pretty old organization, huh?”

“Centuries,” Romanov says, her voice tight.

“How old?”

“How old are you?”

“Twent—or. Oh.” Steve stutters. _Twenty-four_ floats to mind, but he would have to do the math—he doesn’t know—exactly—

“We can do this another time,” Romanov says gently.

Another time, Jesus, as if he hasn’t missed enough time already, ages and ages, literally at his fingertips.

Some of the little nameplates list years of service, and he has to go so far back, so deep down the winding corridor, just to reach the 2000s. As he travels back in time, the portraits shrink; the subjects smile more.

The hall narrows into shadows. The last few portraits are small and neat with matching frames, and—

“Oh.”

“Captain Rogers?”

_Intelligence gave us a location in Russia, but that far across the border, and in February—_

“Captain!”

Steve’s lungs burn, the first breath of air, expelling gallons—an ocean—cold water—

“ _Rogers_.”

Peggy’s hands are on him.

He looks at her;

at Romanov.

“Peggy,” he whispers.

“Are you alright?” Romanov asks.

Steve looks up again at the portrait. The first portrait. The first one. Swaying, he gazes up the hallway, the row of portraits twining into one bright thread.

Agent Romanov runs her hand down Steve’s arm, brings it to rest on his elbow. “Peggy Carter,” she says, looking at the photograph, “founded S.H.I.E.L.D.”

So much. Steve has missed so much. Not even just years, decades, centuries, which is a lot to think about. But stuff happened in those centuries. So much stuff. The people he knew and the people he never got to know.

He turns toward the shadowy end of the hallway. “The museum is down here?”

Agent Romanov says, “We don’t have to do this now,” and follows Steve down the hall.

 

In 2015, Steve and Bucky went to the New York Botanical Garden together.

It’s a collection of gardens, you know. Dozens of carefully cultivated landscapes, each captured in its own little pocket of life, its own little green idea right in the reality of the city. The guidebooks cordon off each garden by season. _What’s Beautiful Now_ , the guidebooks direct visitors; _View By Season!_ Daffodils flood the hills in April; fruit weighs the orchards in October; the silver cedars are sensational in midwinter. The guidebooks know you have a time budget. The guidebooks beckon you in and direct you to the areas that look best, depending on the time of year.

 _Best_ , as if a person born and brutalized by the Bronx has any business establishing good or bad in the context of crabapple blossoms.

Or _looks_ , for that matter. Who knows what looks and what has a look worth looking for.

It was summer, their garden visit. Steve only remembers because it was hot out and Bucky wore workout clothes and probably went to to the gym afterwards. He remembers the guides and the guidebooks telling them where to go. He remembers feeling choked by the very thought; he remembers the indignity of it, the presumptuousness. “We’ll see whatever flowers we want,” he had said, and Bucky had laughed at him, laughed in a fond, indulgent way. The way that said, _you’re ridiculous; where do we start?_

They saw a lot of flowers, that day, and they also saw a lot of bare rockways and browning grasses and the last bloated blossoms clinging to magnolia boughs.

They spent more time at the Botanical Gardens than they originally planned, is the point. (Come to think of it, Bucky probably didn’t go anywhere at all, afterwards. They probably didn’t have time to get dinner, and probably had to cook some kind of cheap Ramen with onion and spinach and red pepper and chives. A Bucky Barnes Specialty, all for under five dollars and fifteen minutes prep.)

But they saw all the gardens. They smelled the lilacs and kissed in the stippled shadows of the maple trees and pointed at bugs crawling across the sunburned perennials. _Spring is better_ , the guidebooks said, or _the fruits of fall_ ; and Steve slid his guidebook into the nearest recycling bin and soaked in the sepia summer tones.

This museum in the City Seven barracks is a seasonal walk. _View By Season! What Looks Best!_

It is a small chamber tucked at the end of a long hallway, a boxy chapel with tall displays and twinkling photos of the Howling Commandos, backlit in black-and-white. Short blurbs brag about Steve’s antics and Bucky’s endless fortitude and Dum Dum Dugan’s spirited and sometimes last-second howitzer selection.

This museum doesn’t have any of the bugs or the dry leaves.

There are contracts in display cases, protected by special lighting so as not to damage signatures. _Steve Rogers, CO_ , and right below that, _Isaiah Bradley_ in looping letters; _James Buchanan_ _Barnes_ in neatly-sliced cursive. Of course, these papers don't show the conversations that bore them; begging Isaiah to stick around, instead of leading his own operation; persuading Bucky not to take that honorable discharge.

In the middle of the room, Steve raises both hands to a display wall. A candid portrait, some photographer lucky enough to capture the commandos in a relaxed pose and complete personnel. Dugan and Morita and Jones with their arms around each other. Isaiah Bradley, seated with his back to the wall, looking into the distance with a somber, GQ jut of the chin, as always. He was uncannily philosophical and photogenic whatever the circumstance; jeans, gym shoes, fatigues, deserts, dirt floors.

In the middle of the group stand Steve and Bucky, smiles on each other.

Steve wonders, for a brief distant second, if he looks the same way now as he did then. If he has the same oceanic wonder in his eyes, whether it’s a photo of Bucky or the real thing standing in front of him.

He wonders.

A voiceover narrates Steve’s journey through the museum.

_Steve Rogers served not only as the commanding officer, but also the heart and soul of the division …_

Steve scoffs. “That’s not true. Isaiah was … he kept us going. Always.”

Behind him, he can sense Agent Romanov. She follows him at a careful distance, careful for both their sake.

_Captain America created the foundation for the city you live in today, forged the City on peace and unity …_

Steve approaches a table, above which a full-color, semi-transparent hologram flickers. The unsteady image of Steve Rogers with his shield, the old one—the one he trained with and invented stunts with. The hologram ducks, somersaults, and throws the shield into the distance while holographic Steve kicks an enemy out of frame. His shield doesn’t come back for several minutes, but Steve recognizes that move; somewhere over Natasha’s shoulder, far out of the boundaries of the hologram, Isaiah Bradley would have it, would be fighting off Hydra soldiers before throwing the shield back.

Steve blinks. Through the hologram, he can see another row of display cases. He glides to them, dreamlike. The glass closets are taller than Steve, and inside each one, an outfit stands apparently of its own free will, as if wrapped around an invisible mannequin. Their old fatigues, mostly—Jones, Dernier, Falsworth—Dugan with shoulders twice as broad as everyone else’s.

 _James Buchanan Barnes_ , one reads, the one with the rumpled navy scarf he always had around his neck. Protected his face from the sand, especially if he needed to make crazy longshots. Dum Dum always called him a fashionista for it, but they all had their uniform quirks. Not least of all Steve, who wore a dusky red-white-and-blue MOLLE vest over the standard-issue multicam.

It hangs next to Bucky’s uniform.

There are weapons in the cases, too. Makeshift detonators that Dum Dum patched together, Bucky’s overhauled Dragunov that the higher-ups all pretended not to notice.

“No shield,” he says softly. Guns, arms, ammunition, helmets, old walkie-talkies and other communications paraphernalia. Nowhere among them is the classic shield he carried by his side for over a year.

“Well,” Romanov says, “turns out you don’t need it.”

She’s not wrong, but the absence makes his ribs feel tight.

Without responding, Steve drifts away from the display case and almost walks into a wall of text and video and photographs.

_… only Howling Commandos to give their lives in service of their country …_

Steve pauses in front of that display for a long time. It features footage of Bucky in his uniform, cleaning his rifle. Every few seconds he looks up at the camera and laughs and shakes his head. His lips trace some kind of joke as he points at the person taking the video, and then he returns to his firearm. The video loops several times before Steve walks away.

He turns a shoulder toward Agent Romanov. “Outdated information, I guess?” he says.

“Well,” she says, half of her mouth turning up, “no one knew you would reappear three hundred years later, did they?”

“No,” Steve says. “No. But I guess that makes Bucky the only one.”

Romanov doesn’t answer, but she looks sympathetic, and somehow the expression suits her.

* * *

The mess hall is half full of men and women in everything from full tac gear to their standard-issue olive-drab sweats and shirts. Steve and Romanov only draw a few glances when they first walk in, but as they make their way to the line, Steve catches a few double takes, then some whispers. He forces himself not to duck his head, just follows Romanov’s curly ponytail as she picks up two trays and hands him one.

They sit at an empty table together and Romanov mutters, “They’ll get over it. I would have brought you around sooner, so they could get _over_ it sooner, but the docs didn’t want anyone exposed to anything.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at her. “Me or them?”

“Both,” Romanov says.

Before Steve can answer, a man drops into a chair across from them and leans his elbows on the table. He’s half-dressed in tac gear - thick pants, boots, empty holsters, but only a t-shirt. He’s familiar, dark hair and eyes, but it’s not until Steve sees the scar on his eyebrow that he recognizes him as the commander from the team that chased Steve through the hospital that first night. It feels like a thousand years ago, not two weeks.

He eyes Steve for a moment, then sticks out a hand. “Brock Rumlow.”

“Steve Rogers.” Steve takes his hand, calloused and rough. His grip is a little too tight. Steve doesn’t let it get to him. Just another army guy.

Rumlow grins and drops his hand. “Yeah, I know. They let you out of the tower, huh?”

“For now,” Steve says, unable to stop himself from grimacing.

“Any idea when they'll let you out for some training?” Rumlow asks.

Romanov shrugs. “I wish I had the answer to that.”

“Who said I need training?” Steve says, only half-teasing.

Romanov stabs a potato with her fork, but Rumlow laughs. “Yes!” he says, reaching across the table to give Steve’s shoulder a friendly shove. “I like this guy!”

“I’m sure,” Romanov says.

“What?” Rumlow says, grinning. “He wants to get out there, who’s stopping him?”

“Doctors.”

Rumlow scoffs. “He’s Captain America. The Arctic Ocean couldn’t give him so much a head cold. I think he can handle a few terrorist attacks.”

“Terrorists?” Steve says. That’s insane, the thought that—the museum talked about ideals, about forging a country on peace and unity. Said that Captain America helped pour the foundation itself. He _died_ fighting terrorism. Or—would have died.

“That’s what the Baron is calling them,” Romanov says.

Steve frowns. “So they’re—what kind of …”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“The uprisings,” Rumlow says. “Right here in the city. That’s what S.H.I.E.L.D. is for.”

Steve blinks.

“Here, look,” Rumlow says. “Homeland security at work.”

He leans back, digs into an inner pocket of his work pants, and pulls out a small oval-shaped device. He slides it to the middle of the table. At first, absurdly, Steve thinks of volcanic rock; then he gets a better look, and thinks, _cell phone_.

Rumlow swipes a finger across the screen to reveal a list that Steve can’t quite catch, reading upside-down and all. When Rumlow finds what he’s looking for, he lets out a little “ha!” of triumph and taps a finger on the screen.

A holographic image blossoms, skips, and then settles on a row of people in armor, carrying riot shields. As Steve watches, the image zooms out to include another crowd of people, these a hodgepodge, with signs and handheld-holograms, dressed in street clothes, black with neon trim. The image is hard to read, but when the front row of angry mismatched people collapses, Steve starts.

“Stunned,” Romanov explains.

The people with riot shields advance.

“Wait.” Steve shakes his head and scowls at Rumlow. “Are those civilians?”

“Protesters.” Rumlow shrugs. “They’re disturbing the peace, Cap.”

“ _Protesters?_ ” Steve clarifies. Bile climbs up his throat. “What _year_ is it?”

“Didn’t you tell him?” Rumlow asks Romanov, apparently not catching Steve’s sarcasm.

Steve rounds on Agent Romanov and snaps, “‘ _Homeland security_ ’ meant something different in my day.”

“Did it?” Romanov asks, eyebrow gently arched.

Steve’s throat simmers.

Oblivious, Rumlow continues to fiddle with his phone screen. “Here, I’ve got a better one—”

“One with more innocent people?” Steve demands.

Rumlow pauses. “They’re attacking American soil out there. Their _own city_ ,” he sneers.

“They have the right to protest,” Steve says.

Rumlow scoffs. “Yeah, well, a group of _‘protesters’_ set off a bomb in the Santa Maria district just days ago.”

“What’s in the Santa Maria district?” Steve asks.

Romanov answers. “The Baron’s private residence.”

“They bombed the Baron’s _house_?”

“Well,” Rumlow speaks up, “he’s also got a house here on the campus. You know, city property.”

Another hologram shimmers to life. Steve points to the semi-transparent image. “And this … is the Baron’s …”

“Private residence,” Romanov says with thin lips.

The hologram clears up. It’s a much wider shot this time: an intimate public square surrounded by buildings, and the buildings separated from the sidewalks by generous, well-manicured landscaping. The footage fuzzes, then focuses on a gaping glass entryway. Half a dozen kids—teenagers, maybe—linger around the garden, and then scatter. Last of all, a girl with searing turquoise hair dawdles around a lamppost before dashing out of frame.

Seconds later, the lamppost explodes in a shower of glass, sticks, and dirt.

The footage skips; now a crowd mills around the small crater where the lamppost used to be. Skips again, and Steve can make out law enforcement on walkie-talkies. Skips again, and now Steve is looking at a hologram of nearby rooftops. The teenagers run across the frame, pursued by—someone.

Someone in unmarked black leather, long sleeves, carrying a huge firearm not unlike the one Steve just used in System X.

“Is that you?” he asks, glancing across the table.

Rumlow chuckles. His face is keen and sharp. “I wish.”

The footage skips faster, now, jumping from camera to camera to follow the chase. The kids—protesters—duck into open windows, split into three groups, and vanish around corners into narrow alleyways.

Their pursuer is relentless and frightening. The person moves with the seamless precision of a fighter jet, such smoothness and patience that it seems slow. Live footage can’t fully translate the speed of an F-16 or, apparently, this rooftop mercenary.

The person in the hologram stops at every block to take aim and fire at his prey. The ammunition varies: a single bullet shatters a window, a spray of shot chews a hole in a brick corner, and at one point, a small explosion unhinges a fire escape. Steve’s heart throbs with each assault. He tries to count the escaping children, but he can’t keep track, especially once they split up. A queasy fear simmers low in his chest.

A camera catches the person in black from a different angle, and Steve sees the mask hiding his face, eyebrows to jawbone. “Who _is_ that?”

“An agent,” Romanov says quickly, her voice clipped.

Rumlow taps his screen and the hologram disappears; he scrolls through more lists. “They call him the Winter Soldier.”

“That’s not his official title,” Romanov corrects him sharply.

“Check this out,” Rumlow interrupts.

Another hologram blooms over the table top. This one shows the man in black again, carrying nothing but a knife and a baton. Steve watches, fascinated and inexplicably afraid, while the agent takes out two, three, four opponents with nothing but a six-inch blade. Metal flashes—from the knife, maybe?

The agent spins, savage and graceful. Still hidden by that faceless mask.

“Is that a _person?_ ” Steve asks, thinking, absurdly, of the Terminator and Robocop and the Matrix and 20th-century sci-fi.

“Oh, yeah,” Rumlow says, still staring. “Isn’t he amazing?”

Steve swallows. Warily, he glances around the mess hall, as if he might see this Winter Soldier sitting two tables over with salad and a Coke.

“Oh, you won’t see him around here,” Romanov says, reading Steve’s mind.

“Ever?”

“He … has his own facility.”

Steve runs his tongue over his teeth. “Like me?”

“No,” she says firmly.

“Well, what?” Steve asks. “There’s this secret agent running around thinking he’s too good for the rest of us?”

Rumlow chuckles. “Not up to him, Cap. The Baron and the officers decide when he goes where.”

“The—I’m sorry?” Steve blinks. He glances at Romanov, and then back at the footage, which is still playing a brutal combat scene. “You did say this is a _person?_ ”

In the hologram, the tide has turned against the soldier; he’s surrounded and outnumbered, taking a brutal beating. He takes a bullet to the stomach and another man kicks the back of his knees, sending him down. As soon as he gets close, the soldier whips around and up, jams the knife into the man’s throat and then uses his body as a shield from another hail of bullets. Blood is seeping down his stomach and pant leg, but it doesn’t stop him. He doesn’t even pause or try to stop the bleeding, just continues towards his targets. His instinct for survival has been carved out and replaced with blood, blood, blood.

Romanov’s voice drops like a stone. “That’s enough.”

“What?” Rumlow asks, his face a mask of innocence. “He’s magnificent, if I could do half the things—”

“This is a last resort,” Romanov talks over him, looking directly at Steve. “This is a specialist. They only deploy things like this under unique circumstances.”

The footage winks out and Steve stares at her. “Things?”

Romanov blinks, then nods a little. “People—agents,” she corrects softly.

“Soldiers,” Steve mumbles.

Rumlow shifts in his seat. “Anyway, shit like that pops up every day, you know? That’s what we’re fighting out there.”

“We?” Steve asks.

Romanov presse her lips together. “It’s dangerous, that’s all he’s saying. And that’s why the doctors are taking extra precautions.”

Steve shoves aside thoughts of attacking innocent protesters. His eyes drift to the windows on the far side of the mess hall. “Still wouldn’t hurt to see some sunlight, once in awhile.”

“Sunlight.” Romanov pushes her tray back from the edge of the table. “ _That_ , we can arrange.”

 

Another courtyard rests in the middle of the barracks, this one without any artificial turf or marble decor. There is a glass wall along one edge with what looks like a gym inside. The huge courtyard is sectioned off on their end, but left in an open field on the other.

Ropes cordon off small arenas across the lawn. Agents and officers spar in the rings nearby, some with weapons, some without. They’re all handheld instruments—batons and stun guns and knives. Romanov is in tight pants and a nice shirt today, but marches with purpose.

“Rumlow,” she says, leading him through the maze of fighting rings. “These are your facilities. Mind if we step in?”

Rumlow grins. “Only if I get to watch. You fighting in that or do you wanna use the locker room?”

Agent Romanov shrugs, detouring to an empty ring. “This will be fine. Captain? You need to change?”

Steve blinks. He’s going to fight _her._ He glances down at his usual sweatpants-and-t-shirt combo, and shakes his head. “This is fine.”

Romanov smiles. “Let’s go, then.”

“Thought we were on the same team, agent,” Steve teases.

She smirks.

Rumlow whistles between his fingers and the sounds of fighting around the field stop. “The Widow is gonna spar with Cap!” He calls. “All of you should watch, maybe you’ll learn something.”

Steve steps across the half faded line in the dirt, ignoring the sound of the men and women gathering behind him. “No superpowers,” he tells her, and she chuckles.

“Deal. I’ll even go easy on you.”

Rumlow laughs behind Steve. “Don’t listen to her, Cap. She’s trying to lull you into a false sense of security.”

Steve doesn’t take his eyes off Romanov, settling into a fighting stance. “I know.”

Romanov just keeps smiling, and then suddenly she’s darting forward, low to the ground, aiming a punch right at Steve’s solar plexus. He steps back and to the side, grabbing for her wrist, but she twists out of his grip immediately and dances away. Her smile widens, and Steve feels himself grinning back. No going easy.

Dirt flies, sometimes underfoot, sometimes as a weapon. Steve hops to avoid a strike to the knees, and Romanov twists away when Steve snatches her ankle. Instinctively, he blocks blows with his left arm. After a few minutes, Romanov catches him in his habit and fools him with a series of feints. She sweeps his feet out from under him, sends him to his back, darts in for an easy attack—and Steve somersaults backwards, a little wild, a little desperate, just to get away.

Agent Romanov fights like Steve; that is, she fights dirty. It’s a nice change and an even nicer challenge.

Voices kick up a cacophony around the circle. White noise on the edge of Steve’s ears, like old cheap surround-sound and even less important. It’s easy to sink into the familiar rhythm of hand-to-hand combat. Unlike System X, this is simple, rudimentary, haphazard showdown makes sense. This could happen in any century. And the noise just focuses Steve. Drowns out all his thoughts and distractions.

He takes a few hits, glancing blows of his arms and his back, gets in a few of his own. She’s fast and highly skilled of course, but she’s also hard to read, good at disguising her own movement. Finally, he pushes Romanov past the center of the ring, shrinking her space to move.

“What do you got, Captain?” she says.

It makes him hesitate, just for a second; then he strikes. She leaves her back hip open, if only he can get—

Before he knows it, he’s looking at the sky and gasping for air. Agent Romanov unwinds her legs from his neck and pins one arm behind his back.

“You got anything else?”

Steve taps out.

Romanov releases him, and he rolls over to look up at her. Red hair dancing dark against the cloud-logged sky. She is smiling.

“The ground is comfortable, thanks,” Steve jokes, and smiles back.

She holds out a hand and pulls Steve to his feet.

“Alright,” he admits, dusting himself off, “maybe I could use a few more days of training.”

Rumlow claps him on the back. “Don’t feel bad, Cap. The Widow makes us all look bad.”

With a smile and an exhale, Agent Romanov takes Steve’s elbow and steers him through the crowd.

“He keeps calling you a widow?” Steve points out, tilting it as a question.

“Black Widow,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “Like the spider.”

Red hourglasses and silver webs.

“Right. Makes sense," Steve says truthfully.

“You looked good back there,” she offers.

“Eh,” he tilts his head back. Looks at the sky, the luminous golden swell of clouds. He wonders if the sun ever shines, anymore. “Hey, Romanov.”

“Mm?”

“You’ve gotta show me that move at the end, with your thighs.”

She grins. “We can practice on Agent Rumlow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey thanks for putting up with the hiatus! school is lame. don't worry, this poor work in progress isnt and won't be abandoned. it's just slow going.
> 
> i would like to thank my coauthor, lisainthesky, for letting me mess up her plot with weird garden metaphors, and for generally being an awesome person.


	7. Chapter 7

_Steve arches his back until it pops, and then groans. He’s going to regret sitting on the floor so long. With a sigh, he scans the rug in the main room. It’s almost impossible to see under the miscellania._

_A suitcase hangs open, partially packed, and a landscape of half-folded laundry spills out around it; various clothes and toiletries and running shoes and an external hard drive and a brand new pack of underwear and unmatched socks waiting to find their partners._

_Bucky’s whole life, everything they can stuff into a suitcase, ready for deployment._

_Steve has been washing clothes and sorting all day. For the most part, Bucky tried to help, and for the most part, Steve wouldn’t let him. They’re getting everything in order, slowly but surely. Now Bucky is on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring glassy-eyed at the floor between his feet._

_“Hey,” Steve says gently._

_No answer._

_He rolls onto his knees and crawls toward Bucky. Travels between a neatly-folded pile of shorts and the laptop where it rests on a new pack of twin-long sheets._

_When he reaches the arm of the couch, Steve pulls himself up. He reaches for Bucky’s shoulder, stops, then settles his hand there. Bucky doesn’t move._

_“Buck?”_

_“Hey.”_

_“Are you alright?”_

_Bucky turns to him finally, a smile on his lips and not in his eyes. “I’m fine, baby.” He reaches out and settles his hands on Steve’s waist, tugging him forward until their knees brush. Steve moves his hand into Buck’s hair and just looks at him._

_Bucky huffs a laugh. He shuts his eyes and leans his head into Steve’s hand. “Nervous,” he admits, voice low. “Just — nerves.”_

_Steve nods even though Bucky isn’t looking at him. “Me too.” His voice is a whisper, and suddenly he can feel his throat clamping up. “I should be going with you.”_

_Bucky sighs and looks at Steve. “Steve…”_

_“I should,” Steve insists. “You’ve always had my back. I’ve always had yours. And now — ” he cuts himself off with a frustrated sound. “And now I can’t because this stupid body is — ”_

_“Hey, hey, knock it off,” Bucky says, hands tightening on Steve’s hips. “Your body is fine. I love your body.” Steve snorts and Bucky grins and pulls on him until Steve relents and straddles Bucky’s lap. He’s used to feeling small and bony and silly next to Bucky, but like this, with Bucky’s hands skimming up and down his thighs and Bucky looking at him all serious and dark and playful, it just feels normal. It’s good, even; all's right with the world and Steve can pretend Bucky isn’t shipping off to a foreign country tomorrow to risk his life._

_“You’re cute and you’re sexy and you’re strong.” Bucky’s still talking, running his mouth as usual, caresses getting firmer. Steve rolls his eyes. “It’s true,” Bucky insists._

_“You blind, Barnes?”_

_“I got into sniper school,” Bucky says smugly. “Perfect eyesight, honey, and I got the best view right here.”_

_Steve laughs, and Bucky leans in, trailing his lips up Steve’s throat. Steve squirms at the light touch, laughter stuttering when Bucky’s hands come around to grip his ass and pull him closer._

_“You tryna distract me?” Steve mutters, Bucky’s lips inches from his own. “It won’t work.”_

_“Who said anything about distracting you?” Bucky smirks up at him. “I’m thinking about my own dick here, Stevie, you’re just in the vicinity.”_

_“Jerk.” Steve leans in closer, breathing the word into Bucky’s mouth._

_“Punk,” Bucky says, and presses his smiling lips to Steve’s. Steve sighs and leans in closer, threading his fingers in Bucky’s hair. Bucky kisses Steve like it’s the first time, every time, gentle and exploring and sweet, only speeding up when Steve presses closer, wiggling in his lap a little, gets insistent and greedy._

_“Lemme take you to bed,” Bucky says between kisses._

_“We’re not done packing.”_

_“I got priorities.”_

_Steve opens his mouth to answer — and yelps instead when Bucky grabs his ass and stands up. Steve smacks him before attaching his lips to the skin under Bucky’s ear. Bucky’s laughter quickly morphs into a groan, and he jogs to their bedroom while Steve smirks triumphantly._

* * *

 

_“I still can’t believe we’re responsible for transferring that thing,” Steve says, nodding at Bucky’s neatly-packed rifle._

_In its molded black polymer case, it looks innocuous enough. The little stickers designating country and military branch and destination and name and rank all look like the dumb bumper stickers high school kids stick to trumpet cases on band trips. The thing is, this case is locked in about a thousand places and a thousand different ways. And there’s an M14 EBR inside._

_Bucky looks at Steve and chuckles. “Well it’s_ mine _, after all.”_

_“I dunno, I figured the army would take care of its own weapons,” Steve says. “Instead of just … throwing them with the rest of the luggage.”_

_“Yeah, don’t tell the suburban white moms about the sniper in cargo.”_

_They both watch JFK personnel wheel the rifle away on its own luggage cart._

_Steve swallows and lets out a shaky breath. “Fuck,” he says, and looks up at Bucky._

_“I know,”_

_They aren’t the only military outside security. There’s a young woman and two other men in fatigues, lingering with children and family members. One still has his firearm, the case leaning innocently against a pillar. Nearby stands a man with bushy gray eyebrows and a three-piece suit, deep in conversation with a woman in dress-blues._

_Hugs, kisses, laughter, tears. A toddler starts sobbing, turning up the volume as its parent pulls away._

_Steve growls in the back of his throat. Without saying anything, Bucky rests a hand on his hip._

_“What am I supposed to do, Buck?”_

_“I know.”_

_“Just stand around while you all go off and get yourselves killed?”_

_“No one’s getting killed.”_

_Steve blinks once, hard. He feels so_ much _, like the pit of a volcano in his insides, a swirl of words that want to erupt. And now Bucky’s leaving. He wants to open his mouth and burn the world down._

_Steve is simmering from the ground up when Bucky pulls him into a hug._

_“It’ll be over before you know it.”_

_Steve sucks in a cooling breath. Locks his arms around Bucky’s waist. “Holy shit, I love you.”_

_“The language of romance.”_

_“Shut up, Buck.”_

_“Love you too.”_

_Bucky squeezes harder; Steve squeezes back, as hard as he can, which isn’t much, and the thought makes him burn brighter and hug tighter._

_They hold each other for a long time. The toddler stops crying; maybe it’s already gone._

_When Steve pulls away, he swipes a discreet hand over his eyes. “You better, uh, catch up with that gun.”_

_“Well,” Bucky laughs, “it’s not exactly a carry-on.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_Bucky kisses him, a hand cradling his cheek, and Steve locks his arms around Bucky’s neck. It’s just like the first time, again, always. Today it feels like the last._

_Months from now, Steve won’t remember the details. He won’t remember letting Bucky go, and he won’t remember which security line he ducks into. But he will remember Bucky winking and giving him a dorky salute._

_He will remember saying “I love you,” one more time, and he will remember Bucky’s last words before leaving: “I’ll meet you on the other side.”_

_After that, Steve will not remember how long he stands there, alone, seething. But he will remember pacing back and forth, glaring at the TSA kiosk. And he will remember that old man with the suit and the bushy eyebrows._

_“Hello,” the man says, approaching Steve with some trepidation._

_“I’m going, I’m going,” Steve snaps._

_“No, no, no,” the man says, inclining his head. “I wanted to speak to you. I couldn’t help but notice …”_

_Steve scowls. “They got rid of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ years ago.”_

_“Ah, yes, thankfully,” the man says, half-smiling. “I just couldn’t help but notice your … passion.”_

_“You selling something?”_

_The man laughs. “Not exactly. You’re with Barnes, correct?”_

_“... Sergeant Barnes,” Steve says slowly. “Yes.”_

_“That’s what I thought. You were with him at MEPS and at all the other physicals. Couldn’t keep you away.”_

_Steve doesn’t say anything. In fact, his eyes drift over the man’s shoulder, calculating a safe escape route, if necessary._

_“I admire your tenacity,” the man says. His smile broadens, and he adjusts his glasses. “I would like to introduce myself. My name is Dr. Abraham Erskine.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> APPARENTLY mab has been leaving author's notes here telling you all how amazing i am but not HOW INCREDIBLE SHE IS???? which is just insane. honestly nothing would be finished without her, because i have no follow through!! she is a gift <3


	8. Chapter 8

Romanov arrives at Steve’s room that evening, unusually late. The little holographic projection over Steve’s nightstand tells him that it’s almost midnight.

“Heading back to medical,” she says, and looks annoyed for the briefest moment. “They’ve got _data_ for you.”

“What kind of data?”

Romanov wrinkles her nose, but doesn’t answer. Steve guesses she doesn’t know, and that’s what’s got her irritated. She seems like the kind of person who hoards information about everyone and everything and never forgets any of it.

She beckons him into the hallway. “They need to run some more tests on this new superpower.”

“It’s not exactly _new_ ,” Steve points out.

“It’s new to our scientists.”

“That’s embarrassing.”

Romanov wheels around to face him. “Something bothering you, Captain?”

Everything is bothering Steve, of course, but he knows that’s not what she means. Still, Steve isn’t sure he wants to talk to her about the dreams of bright sand, or the lack of appetite, or the sense memory of Bucky’s knuckles rubbing the small of his back through his t-shirt. He’s not sure he can yet, or that Romanov is the right person.

Sparring with her was great, but spilling his guts? Kind of stresses Steve out, just thinking about it.

“My superpowers were invented three hundred years ago,” he says instead. The muscles in his face tighten. “Trust me, they’ve been tested. _Field_ -tested. You saw the records. Dum Dum Dugan. Peggy Carter. Isaiah Bradley,” he says. _Bucky Barnes_ , he doesn’t say _._ “Everyone in this tower thinks they know all about Captain America,” Steve spits, “so where are the records on his _superpowers_?”

Romanov looks at him. Her gaze flicks to his mouth, to his shoulders, and back to his eyes. “I’m not a scientist, Captain.”

“Well, right now it looks like there’s a flock of scientists keeping me locked in a tower.” Steve puts his hands on his hips. “I’m with Rumlow. Let me out of here.”

Romanov inclines her head. She doesn’t answer right away. She doesn’t answer while she swipes her ID in front of the elevator-activation pad. She doesn’t answer while they wait for the doors to swoosh open. She doesn’t answer while she steps into the elevator, or while she waits for Steve to follow, or while she presses the button for the medical floor.

Steve watches Romanov, and Romanov watches the numbers on the elevator count higher and higher.

Ninety. Ninety-one. Ninety-two. Ninety-three.

“You were frozen at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean for three hundred years,” Romanov says, finally. “You came out of the ice not only unharmed, but wielding superhuman powers.” Ninety-four. Ninety-five. Romanov tilts her head, finally, facing Steve with one eyebrow pointed. “You’re a miracle.”

“I’m a soldier.”

“And I’m an agent.”

It’s Steve’s turn to close his mouth. He thinks that Bucky would be proud, and that Isaiah would not, and then he realizes what he’s doing and shuts it down.

Romanov takes a deep breath. The little LED numbers stop at 98. “You’re a miracle in many ways, Captain,” she says. “You were lost once. It would be a shame to lose you again.”

“I’m right here.”

Romanov’s hand darts forward, landing on a little red button. The elevator doors remain shut.

“Anyone else would be dead after three hundred years as an ice cube,” she says. “I know the medical stuff isn’t really your concern. It’s not mine either, but once they’ve got everything they need, we’ll be free to start acclimating you to the new world.” She pauses, and her lips twitch into a tiny smile. “It would go faster if you didn’t spring things like metaphysical shields on us.”

Steve ducks his head slightly. “I feel like I’m playing a card game with you people.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that,” she says. “But you’ve got the upper hand, here, Captain.”

“Do I?”

“You’re one-of-a-kind,” she replies, and lifts her finger off of the button. The elevator door glides open.

“Yeah,” Steve says, looking out the door through the chrome-tipped medical facility. “For now.”

“Some card games are played with partners, Steve,” Romanov points out.

Steve looks at her. She has a bright auburn ponytail and very good posture, and Steve doesn’t know a thing about her.

He’s not fully ashamed about his outbursts, but he is willing to act like it. “I just think it’s weird that they don’t have any of this information already.”

Romanov shrugs. She screws her nose up a little when she does it, and it’s the most natural Steve has seen her look since he met her.

 

Lab techs swarm Steve when they enter the room. They cover him with little silver monitors again, then ask him—order him—to make a shield. The doctors group around the monitors and take notes, muttering under their breath.

“... machines don’t even read it correctly.”

“Advanced biomechanics.”

“An implant, maybe?”

“We’ve tried implants. All our subjects lost limbs.”

Steve can hear the scientists clearly, but _they_ don’t seem to know that.

He doesn’t tell them.

After that, more directions and more exercises. The doctors put Steve on a treadmill. Ask him to manifest shields of varying sizes. Ask him to speed up and slow down. Ask him how it feels.

Romanov loiters in the corner, one hip propped on a table, head tilted lazily. Steve catches her eye and tries not to smile.

She pushes herself off the table and drops a hand to her firearm. “It’s bulletproof?” she calls out.

Steve grins. “Try it.”

Romanov arches an eyebrow, then steps into the middle of the room, drawing her gun. It’s matte black, a smaller version of the ones stored in System X.

She points the barrel at Steve.

“They’ll bounce,” Steve warns, glancing at the doctors. Immediately, they scurry behind the monitors and peek around the machinery like nervous little squirrels.

Romanov flicks off the safety and nods. Steve stretches a shield in front of himself from forehead to knee—glances up, calculating—and nods back.

The first shot ricochets. Romanov and all of the doctors duck. The bullet takes out a lightbulb, showering Steve with sparks and glass confetti. He smiles. Might as well make a show.

Romanov straightens up and raises her gun to fire again, barely flinching this time when it ricochets and punches a dent into the elevator door. The third bullet shatters one of the computer monitors, and all the doctors shout, then tell her to stop. There’s a tiny, satisfied little smirk on her face, and she winks when she catches Steve’s eye. He grins back.

He starts pressing on the backs of all the little beetle-like monitors to detach them, setting them down on their little tray. From the corner of his eye, Steve can see the physicians bow their heads together and murmur discreetly. He has to strain to hear this time, but Steve catches words like “unexpected,” “excellent,” and “opportunity.”

The little egg-headed doctor scurries over to Steve and draws more of his blood, then thrusts a bag at him. It rattles like pill bottles and when Steve looks in, that's exactly what it is.

“Giving me the whole pharmacy, huh?” He asks. Neither Romanov nor the doctor respond to the joke.

The doctor turns back to his colleagues, who hand him a little silver tray. Romanov’s chest rises with a deep breath; she doesn’t release it. She holds the gun loosely in her hand.

Steve narrows his eyes.

“We gonna send me back out in the world, or what?” Steve demands.

“Out in the world?” The nameless doctor turns around to face Steve. There is a small syringe on his silver tray. “Not yet. Too dangerous. We are going to send you up to the laboratory levels.”

Over the doctor’s shoulder, Steve catches Romanov’s unblinking stare. Her eyes flick down, and Steve follows her gaze to the syringe resting on the tray.

The doctor is still talking. “The serum you received in 2016 was highly experimental, as you must know,” he explains. “We believe it is … deteriorating.”

Steve narrows his eyes. “Deteriorating?”

“Meanwhile, your heightened metabolism does not allow your medications to take effect.”

“Medications.”

“We have decided to raise your dosages of vitamins and of Savannah Anti-Virus.”

Steve looks at the syringe, and then at Agent Romanov. She tilts her head, shifting her focus to the doctors behind the bank of monitors. There are three of them.

She adjusts her grip on the gun.

“What’s in these laboratory levels, anyway?” Steve asks.

“Acute treatment,” the doctor says bluntly. “They can provide better resources for experimental specimens like … yourself.”

“I thought there _weren’t_ any specimens like me,” Steve says.

The physician reaches for the syringe. Hesitates. His hand hovers over the tray.

Romanov twitches, and Steve leaps to action.

He dives forward, wrapping the syringe in one fist. With his other hand, he grasps the edge of the tray and swipes it up into the doctor’s chin. The dull clang almost covers up the cry of pain.

From the corner of his eye, Steve can see Agent Romanov somersault over the bank of computers. Steve twirls around the egg-headed doctor and slams the syringe into the back of his neck, pumping him with the cocktail of drugs intended for Steve. More shouting; thuds; a metallic screech. Steve’s egg-headed doctor sinks to the floor with a groan, and then the room goes quiet.

A single gunshot rings through the silence.

Steve spins and sees Romanov, the barrel of her gun aimed at the nearest corner of the room.

“That will take care of one camera feed,” she says, tucking her firearm back under her jacket. “But that wasn’t exactly stealth work.”

Steve glances at the pile of unconscious men and women in lab coats. “Was it something I said?” he jokes.

“Something they said,” she says tersely.

Steve swallows down the rest of the jokes that come to mind.

“You can’t go up to the laboratory levels, Rogers,” she adds. “I’ve seen people who come out of there.”

“People?”

Romanov doesn’t answer, just sets her mouth in a thin line.

She strides toward the door, but Steve feels frozen in place; feels like his stomach and his feet are calcifying to the floor. He looks down at his egg-headed doctor, glasses askew, elbows twitching. “What was in that syringe?” Steve asks.

Agent Romanov turns to face him. “Anti-virus,” she admits, then swipes the keycard to a door next to the elevator.

“The same stuff—you mean that’s the same drug I’ve been taking every morning?”

“Higher dosage,” Romanov clarifies. She looks at Steve, and then down at the doctor. Her lip curls. “Much higher.”

There is a forest fire in Steve’s bones. He feels ill.

He stares at his doctor, then across the room at the chrome machinery, the beeping computer screens; he takes a deep breath, and his nose burns with a sterile chemical odor. The image blurs, and Steve thinks about Syria, and about Bucky’s fingers tight around a sniper rifle; tight around Steve’s forearm.

“You good?”

Steve looks down; Agent Romanov is standing next to him, a small hand on his arm. “We on the same team, Agent?” he asks.

She tilts her head. “Call me Natasha.”

The look at each other. They nod.

“Let’s move,” Steve says. The fire has already started. Let it burn.

He follows Natasha to the side door.

“I guess we won’t be going to those labs?” Steve says darkly.

“You said you wanted to get out into the world.”

She leads the way through the door and into a tight, unmarked staircase flooded with crimson light. Steve leans over the rail, gazing at the tight spirals down, down, down, crimson melting to black melting to nothing. He braces himself and follows Natasha up. Her heels pound on the tile steps. Steve can hear the echo thirty floors both directions.

“We’re going to floor one-hundred,” Natasha explains, her voice all but drowned out in the cacophony of footsteps.

“One-hundred?” Steve asks. “I thought that was Director—”

“Yes.”

They climb. Distantly, Steve hears the _crack_ of a door slamming open, and more footsteps thunder from below, rattling the walls.

They climb faster. They reach an unmarked door with no knob. Romanov steps up to the keypad and swipes her card. An alarm buzzes at them, and the red light above the door flashes three times before settling back on solid red.

“Rogers?” she says.

“We’re trapped?”

Natasha steps aside, smiles, and gestures at the door.

It’s not hard to grasp her intention. Steve bends his knees, angles his shoulder, and barrels through the door; it gives way with a screech. The force of the assault throws Steve off balance, and when he catches his footing, he looks up—

“Captain Rogers.”

“Director Hill,” he answers, blinking at the barrel of her handgun.

“Mind putting my door back where you found it?”

Steve’s chest heaves; he turns to look at Natasha, who has both hands raised in surrender.

Holding the warped door in front of him like a shield, Steve eases backwards toward the empty doorway. The stairwell’s red emergency lights seem to flicker, maybe from the noise.  Alarms blare and footsteps pound and shouts echo up and down—it’s impossible to tell how many people are pursuing them.

Steve swallows. The door, stacked with layers of steel and some other reinforced material—carbon-based?—would have made a good shield. He glances at Maria Hill. She raises her eyebrows.

“Put it back, Steve,” Natasha says.

Director Hill raises her other arm, pointing another handgun at Natasha. “ _Now_ ,” she agrees.

Steve shoves the door into its frame, wedging it in with a metallic screech. Then he turns, empty-handed, to face the Director.

“I didn’t expect the trouble to start so soon,” Maria Hill says. Her voice is like dandelions and afternoon tea; you’d think they were having this conversation over a pair of almond pastries, not a pair of loaded firearms.

“They want to send him to the labs,” Natasha says, just as calm, as if they’re discussing fine Summer weather.

“Hm,” Director Hill frowns. “Upstairs?”

“I couldn’t let that happen,” Natasha confirms.

Steve decides to step in. “Look, you’re outnumbered here, Director. Just let us—”

“Excuse me.” She raises her gun a little higher. “In about thirty seconds, _you’ll_ be the ones outnumbered.”

In the span of an inhale, Steve assesses his surroundings: gray marble floors, minimal decor, low-slung, boxy furniture. Over Hill’s shoulder, he can see a separate alcove that looks like an office; its main feature is a broad black desk. Beyond the glass walls are more glass walls; beyond those glass walls, the swollen, cloudy sky.

Natasha said there was one window in the whole building. One window that opens. She said it was here. But which one?

Steve exhales, and his eyes land on the bank of fluorescent lights over Director Hill’s head.

“I’m not going to those labs,” Steve says, gauging the distance.

“You might not think—”

He doesn’t let Director Hill finish; he darts forward. As expected, she fires at him; he conjures a shield, guessing wildly, hoping for the right angle—the bullet ricochets, and Maria Hill ducks to avoid the shower of glass.

Natasha takes the opening. In a single, fluid movement, she kicks both of Hill’s guns out of reach and wraps one arm around her back. Hill struggles; Natasha grasps her free arm and slams it into the wall, next to a little scanner.

“Let us out,” Natasha orders, sliding Hill’s hand closer to the little pad.

“Fingerprint scanner?” Steve asks.

Natasha nods.

“They’ve called in the Soldier,” Director Hill cries desperately.

“Let us _out_ ,” Natasha repeats.

Hill squirms. “You can’t get away from him.”

“We’ll see about that,” Steve says. He grabs her flailing hand and presses it to the scanner; a wall slides open, a wall to Steve’s right. He didn’t even realize it was a door. Cold air washes over him, raises all the little hairs on his arms and his neck and down his spine.

A crash rocks through the crooked door; it dents, but holds firm. Steve can hear voices cursing and shouting in the stairwell.

“You can’t get away from him,” Director Hill says, softer, almost pleading.

Natasha presses her gun to the Director’s ribs. “Thanks for the warning, Maria,” she whispers, and pulls the trigger. Steve flinches, and then realizes there was no gunshot.

“Stunner,” Natasha says, catching Director Hill around the waist and laying her gently on the ground.

“A what?”

“It’s like … I don’t know how to explain. She’s just stunned.”

“Like a taser?” Steve asks.

“A what?”

Another bang thunders on the other side of the door.

“Never mind,” Steve says.

Natasha pushes him through the doorway to Hill’s office. It is glassy and airy and washed in light; white artificial light and wet natural light.

“Let’s move,” Natasha says, heading for the opposite window. It must be the one that opens.

And then, like a great wave breaking against barren cliff sides, the door behind them crashes into the room. Steve whirls around.

“Rumlow,” he growls.

“Rogers.”

“You gonna try and take me in?”

“We all have orders, Cap.”

“It’s ‘Captain’.”

Natasha curses. “You know what they’ll do to him, Rumlow. You know what they’ll turn him into.”

“Yeah.” Rumlow flashes his teeth. “They’ll turn him into a _god_.”

“They’ll turn him into a weapon.”

Rumlow scoffs—and then, before any of them can speak, he twitches. He raises a single finger, asking for quiet from his audience. “Well,” he says as his grin gains teeth. “Speak of the devil.”

Rumlow slides to one side. Scarlet pours through the doorway, flooding around a tall, dark silhouette. The figure raises his arm, his left arm, and metal flashes red in the emergency lights.

Seeing the Winter Soldier in person is nothing like seeing him on a hologram. Steve doesn’t feel frightened or nauseated. He just feels cold. Trapped by a frost that brings the blood solid around his bones. He thinks of syringes, of lab coats, and of the Arctic Circle, of water so cold it is nothing at all, crystal-blue so you can look right through.

The Soldier stalks into the room. His movement is smooth, unnatural; he moves like a tank. Like something ineffably man-made. But his eyes are blue.

People, Steve thinks; a god, a weapon.

And as the soldier steps closer, without the mask, without the blur of a hologram, Steve can see his face.

“Bucky?”

The metal arm flashes. Steve sees red and blue. He doesn’t see the gun.

“Shit,” Natasha snarls, diving for Director Hill’s desk. She slams a button hidden near the director’s chair.

As the Soldier squeezes the trigger, the air shimmers bright between them. The spray of gunfire bursts against the transparent wall, sizzling to death in a shower of sparks.

“No!” Steve cries, reaching toward Bucky.

“Don’t touch it!” Natasha barks.

Steve’s hand comes to a halt. He breathes heavily, staring at the strange, transparent barrier.

“Damn, Romanov.” Rumlow’s voice somehow resounds clearly, even through the bulletproof wall.  “The Force Fields are pretty new. Didn’t expect you to know about them.”

“I’m full of surprises,” she says.

Their words seem distant, as if they are on shore and Steve is deep underwater.

Across from him, the Soldier cocks his head. Narrows his eyes. Lowers his gun. He inspects the wall, almost curiously. He lifts his left hand, some kind of sleek silver metal, and raises it toward Steve’s, like a mirror. Presses two steel fingertips to the wall. It responds with an electric whine and a shower of sparks. The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitches.

After a moment of assessment, he tosses his aside and selects another from the straps on his back.

Takes aim.

“Steve, we have to go,” Natasha cries.

“Bucky!”

The Soldier hesitates. His eyes—Bucky’s eyes—dart to the floor, to the window, and back to Steve.

“Dammit!” Rumlow says. “For the love of—”

Blue and red and black. There’s no way. There’s no way.

Everyone shouts around him.

Natasha. “We have to go.”

Isaiah. “ _He’s gone_.”

Rumlow. “We need back-up!”

Bucky. “ _I’ll meet you on the other side_.”

Rumlow, again. “I don’t care, this is Captain America we’re talking about! He’s about to get away! I’m telling you to bring in the big guns!”

People in dark armor and tac gear with shimmering riot shields spill through the stairway door. Steve barely registers them; his eyes are locked on Bucky’s, right in front of him, Bucky Barnes, the only eyes Steve has ever died for; and those eyes look back at him, so cold they are nothing at all. Steve can see every minute of every century he missed.

Gunfire peppers the force field. Steve barely notices that—might not have, at all, but Bucky flinches.

Steve’s first thought is, _don’t shoot him_.

He forgets, for a second, that they are shooting at _him_ —at Steve.

The distraction is enough to pull Bucky to the surface for air. Steve remains stuck, drowning, forced to look up through the swirling waters, the churning lights. He watches, the edge of his vision fuzzy and red and blue, as Bucky unhooks a device from his back and slams it against the force field. Veins of light twist around it, protesting in static and sparks. The device latches on, six little silver legs in a bright starburst, vibrating, filling the room with an electric whine.

That is when Natasha yanks Steve back from the wall.

“We have to go now.”

“You don’t understand—” Steve pulls his arm from her grasp. “Bucky!”

“They’re blowing us out, Rogers! We can’t—”

“No!” Steve looks back, desperate.

Rumlow presses a button on the little turtle shell weapon and scurries away from the firebrand sparks.

Natasha drags him to the window. It’s open, barely enough for Steve to fit through. She yanks his arm, and struggles with the window, and gasps. Steve registers through his shock and confusion that there is panic in her eyes, bright and wild.

“You can’t do anything for him if they turn you into the same thing.”

“I’m not leaving him again!”

“You don’t have a _choice!_ ”

A loud _zap_ cuts her off. Steve looks over his shoulder. It’s like a handheld Tesla machine, a squid with legs like lightning. Bucky and Agent Rumlow have already begun to fragment in the sparkling haze. They back away from the wall, blurred, swallowed by flashing red and blue light.

Steve wonders if he could use a shield—

Then he hears a _snap_ , and Natasha grabs a fistful of his shirt. She’s forced the window open, finally, and something in Steve breaks with it.

She’s right.

Without letting go of Steve’s shirt, Natasha pulls out another matte-black tool, about the size of a box cutter, and fires it out the window. She tugs once on the taught, barely-visible wire stretching out, beyond the wall to the next enormous skyscraper. She looks at Steve, pleading. He doesn’t resist this time.

Rooftops, rooftops, rooftops.

Steve remembers rooftops and fire escapes; rolling down sloped concrete and into silver gutters.

Without Natasha, he would be lost. He would fall away into the smoky skyline, slanting into miles and miles of cement and steel. Without Natasha, he would still be drowning. He would still be looking at Bucky’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now we're getting somewhere.


	9. Chapter 9

_The asset isn’t real. It comes and goes on sterile silver trays and loaded guns._

_The lab coats take him room to room, the bars, the doors, the needles waiting on display. He goes into his head and dreams, and goes outside and dreams._

“Soldat.”

_There are dreams that hurt, and dreams with soft hands, and other dreams of people behind bars. A person on the asset’s side of the bars._

_The person takes his hand and presses fingerprints against his wrist. The hands around his hand are warm. His pulse beats slow and cold between them. A person, a person, who holds him close, touches the back of his neck and guides him in and calls him “Bucky.”_

_His arms feel heavy._

_“Prep the asset.”_

_His veins feel heavy, his pulse feels heavy, and the hands around his pulse press down until he sinks into the earth. His veins like roots: the tubes connected to his arms like roots, a clear tube with clear liquid. Sinking._

_A person who holds him close._

_There is a person in the blackness. A person with long eyelashes and broad shoulders. Their hands stretch across the asset’s ribs and his collarbone, broad hands to fit broad shoulders, broad roots tapping into his pulse._

_There are other people. The asset blinks, slow, sinking, sparks fire off in the back of his neck. The dreams have many people. A woman with dark skin. A man with bird feet around his eyes. A man with a bird. A person with glasses leans in close, takes his hand, turns it over to face the burning lights, and calls him “Sergeant.”_

_“No. Not again. Not him. You have taken him the last five times.”_

_Some of his dreams don’t have people. Sometimes he dreams of a burnt, acrid smell. Sandstorms. Stars. Beds with blankets and pillows. Blood, and flowers, and blood dripping in strings across blue flowers._

_He hears different things. Music, sometimes loud and sometimes distant, like fabric draped over his lap._

_Voices speak different languages and the asset understands them. They call him_ soldat, soldado, _James,_ vojak.

_There is a person with long lashes standing over him. And they trade places. In the asset’s mind, he stands over the person, over the broad shoulders and plastic tubes. Warm hands with warm fingers roll over the bones of his fingers._

_A person holds him close and calls him “Soldier.”_


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam Wilson meets some new people.

It’s that violet time of night where the smog and the sunset-clouds smudge Redwing right out. Sam cranes his neck with a frown. Not that it’s unusual or anything, her drifting off for a night or a day or more when she’s hungry or bored. Stuff is just real quiet when she’s gone.

Lonely, is what it is.

He thinks that one speck is probably her, but who knows, with the shower of crows flying home. It’s that time of night.

It took forever to convince Riley that crows aren’t so bad. “Crows! Fucking crows!” he would complain. “As if we need _more_ bad luck!”

Sam would explain that they’re just minding their own business, that they don’t mean nothing, good or bad, and they’re actually some of the smartest birds out there. “They won’t get in our way,” Sam would say. “They know better.”

Crows also pick up patterns. Every time he’d go out on the balcony to feed Redwing, Sam would see a group of crows out the corner of his eye, a few at first, then the few grew to a handful and the handful to a flock. “It’s called a _murder,_ Sam!” Riley would hiss, arms folded, feet planted between Sam and the big black birds. “How did they get a name like this? Murder. They can’t be good birds.”

“All birds are good birds.”

At the time, Sam wasn’t sure if he believed that; but he liked messing with Riley. Sue him, the guy looked cute with his jaw clenched and those dark eyes buried deep into a target. Or— _cute_ might not be the right word, but whenever Riley Reyes got intense, Sam could practically hear the wind whistle between his ribs. Like Riley could knock a building down with his scowl alone.

Plus, Sam had a soft spot for these crows. They didn’t pick on Redwing, even though genetics predisposed them to gang up on just about anything they could outnumber. They didn’t pick on her at all. Sam felt like they had an understanding, him and the crows. They kept their distance and they learned that if they waited their turn, Sam would toss them scraps once Redwing had her fill.

They learned other things, too. They followed Riley when he went out tagging in the milky light of dawn and dusk. Riley would say it was creepy. “They like you,” Sam would assure him. “They like when you paint.”

Whenever Sam and Riley passed by one of his pieces, the crows would gather on the light posts and grunt and rattle softly. _You’re back,_ they would say, or they would ask for more painting, more talking, more food.

Sam would say, “See? They’re nice.”

And Riley would wrinkle his nose. “These are nice noises?”

Obviously he couldn’t understand them the way _Sam_ could. But crows are fast learners. Didn’t take them long to figure out who painted and who was the pushover at snacktime. Didn’t take them long to figure out Sam understood them when no one else did.

But they liked Riley. And they knew how to make him understand.

One time, in the smoke and gold of city midnight, Riley had burst into their home, panting hard, sweat smearing the hair around his ears, panic glistening in his eyes. Running on the last fumes. Before Sam could say a word, Riley collapsed in his arms, body stretched raw and shaking and short-circuiting.

A pair of crows perched on the porch-rail. Redwing puffed up and danced in her corner. But the crows, they squawked in short bursts and Sam made out key words—Fast, Predator, Warning, Run, Weapons, _Predator._

“The Soldier,” Riley had gasped.

Sam’s arms had clenched and he pulled Riley inside, dragging him out of the streetlight’s beam. “Here?”

“No.” Riley had been shaking, or he had been panting so hard it was the same, or maybe it was his restless hands, searching Sam for for all his solid parts.

Sam doesn’t remember now, which it was, and that knocks the wind right out of him. He can’t remember. He can’t remember what it was to have Riley Reyes alive in his arms.

A crow flies low overhead, so low and slow Sam can see the silver-black shimmer of each feather. Sam takes a deep breath.

They hadn’t been caught, that night. Riley had explained, eventually, after his blood cooled, after Sam sank to the floor and threaded his limbs through Riley’s and sewed up his ragged breath.

“The crows,” Riley had said. “They … told me.”

The pair of them started up again on the porch. A low rattle that rolled into a purr.

After that, when the crows talked, they both listened.

Sam likes them, still. He can tell some of their voices apart, especially the ones who hang around the Snapback Lounge, and the birds keep learning. They’re figuring out which kids feed them and which ones want to be friends. And on missions, Sam can count on the crows to be their eyes in the sky.

It makes him sick, though. He misses Riley so much, and the crows just make him miss Riley more. Makes his heart stretch, like it’s got wings wrapped in wire and every time he looks at the sky, they strain and bleed and can’t get free.

“Hey, Sam!”

A sharp _crack_ startles him back to the rooftop. America pokes her head up over the edge of the roof. Her pistol rests nearby.

“We better get moving, Sam,” she says, pulling herself up with a grunt. “The streetlights are coming on.”

Sam sucks in a cooling breath. He curls his fingers around his bicep, tight, so tight he’ll leave featherlight bruises behind. And he blocks out the crows and pulls himself awake.

“Sam?”

“Yep.”

He and Kate approach the lip of the roof. Sam peers over the edge while Kate gives America a hand up.

Sure enough, little pinprick streetlights are coming to life, sprinkling like salt down the sidewalks.

“Cops will have the advantage when it gets dark,” America says, dusting herself off.

The three of them exchange a look, a look of knowing, a look full and rich with the cynicism of violent experience.

“Hey, boss,” Cassie says as she sidles alongside them. “I’m low on C4 but I’ll tag along, if you want.”

Sam shrugs one shoulder. “Yeah, go ahead. We should all meet Kate’s Mystery Spy.”

“He’s not a spy.” Kate rolls her eyes. “And he’s no mystery, either. Trust me.”

That may be, but Sam thought he knew all the underground rebels worth knowing in this scum seventh city, and yeah, he’s heard of Hawkeye, everyone’s _heard_ of Hawkeye, but first of all Kate is also Hawkeye and second of all Sam’s never seen the guy in person. These days it’s safer doing business face-to-face. Safer to make judgments when you can mark all the muscles around their mouth.

Sam and the girls cross the rooftop at a brisk walk. Near the center, Teddy and Eli are loitering under the building’s monstrous spire/antenna structure.

Sam calls out once they’re within shout. “Where’s Billy?” he asks.

Teddy cranes his neck and points straight up.

As Sam closes in, Eli folds his arms. “He’s climbing down now.”

They all look up, necks cricked. Billy Kaplan drips out of the lavender sky, spinning down the antenna, the spire, the concrete base.

Teddy stretches out a hand and helps him to the solid rooftop. Once his feet are level, Billy rustles the wind out of his hair and the dirt out of his eyes. Teddy pulls a scarf from his belt.

“No,” Billy says, touching his forearm. “I want the red one.”

Teddy throws the green one over his shoulder and hands over a red scarf without argument.

“You’re always in red,” Eli points out, cocking his head. “Favorite color, or something?”

Billy glances at Eli while wrapping the red bandana around his curls. “Red is the color associated with the root chakra. It connects our breath to our foundation, the base of the spine, and the foundation of the earth.”

Eli blinks. “... Fair enough.”

From the day Sam met him and pulled him out of that wrecked police van, Billy has been a breath of fresh air. A real kind of voice like a breeze from another realm, like the green on the trees and the salt left behind from the sea. Used to be he could even calm Riley down.

Sam triple-checks the ammo-cartridges strapped to his belt.

Meanwhile, Billy pulls the knot tight on his red bandana and blinks his eyes bright. No telling why he bothers with the head wrap; it can’t barely contain the pile of hair dancing around his head.

“So what’s blue?” Eli asks, adjusting the blue scarf around his own head.

“The throat,” Billy says. He stretches his neck and touches it lightly, thoughtfully. “The truth.”

Eli’s fingers still for a second.

“You look good in blue,” Billy adds. He fixes Eli with an earnest smile.

Eli shakes his head. “Thanks.”

“Hey, hippies,” Kate says, unfolding her legs and hopping off a concrete wall. “Are you two done fighting over rainbow colors?”

“Talk to me when you take off the purple jacket,” Eli shoots back.

“So, Billy,” Sam calls, because if he didn’t cut them off Eli and Kate would be at it all night. “What did you hear?”

Billy stretches out one of his long hands and lays it on the big concrete bannister, the one in the center of the roof, and he looks up at the antenna spiraling into the sky. He pats the cement gently. “I heard the Witch,” he says, and the way he says it you can hear the capital W.

“Been awhile, hasn’t it?” Teddy asks.

“The higher you get, the easier she is to hear.”

“I bet,” Cassie mutters, which earns her a smack on the shoulder from Kate even though they’re all thinking it.

“She talked about the horizon. The flat one, beyond the City walls. I didn’t get all of it. And she said to trust the birds. If a bird follows you, it wants to guard over you.”

Sam’s eyes flick to the sky, peppered with birds, black against the clouds. “Anything about the police? Anything about tonight?”

“I heard the middle of a S.H.I.E.L.D. transmission,” Billy says, making eye contact with Sam, _real_ eye contact, not his dreamy _doe_ eye contact. His eyes are weaponized. “I missed the beginning. But I heard them talk about the location of the protests.”

“Tower Square.”

“And I heard deployment coordinates for the Winter Soldier.”

Sam can feel the blood pumping in his throat. “Fuck.”

“That’s bullshit!” America’s voice bursts into flame. “That’s a peaceful protest, they can’t—”

“You hear anything else about the Soldier?” Sam asks.

Billy shakes his head. “Just his location. There was too much interference.”

“Why would they send the Soldier to a civilian rally?” Eli asks. “They’ve never done anything like this before.”

“If the Soldier is there, he’s probably got a STRIKE team with him,” Cassie points out.

Teddy slumps his shoulders. “It’s not even a huge protest.”

“Okay, alright, listen.” Sam raises his voice and immediately feels too exposed as a result. He takes a deep breath and glances up at the sky for a second. “This doesn’t change nothing. It’s a little weird for a rally response. But that’s why we’re doing this, right?”

America squares her shoulders. “Do we need more ammo?”

“No,” Sam sighs. “Stop. We’re defensive only, nothing changes that. We’re just extra focused, alright?”

“Plus we’re meeting up with Clint.” Kate is already checking the state of her bow. “That’s great back-up.”

“Awesome,” Teddy says.

“Just don’t tell him I said that,” Kate adds. “Ever.”

“The plan doesn’t change,” Sam says again for emphasis because otherwise one kid or another would forget or figure out a loophole. “We’re fucking guardian _angels_ up here. We’re _cover_ , and only if _necessary_.”

“You got it, boss,” Teddy says.

America clenches her jaw and spins on her heels and heads for the opposite side of the roof.

Kate darts after her. The rest follow, Sam in the back where he can see them all at once. His gaze drifts north and falls on a flock of birds as it flutters overhead, their frantic wings wed to the wind. Sam squints. They’re crows, of course.

_He’s back._

Crows are keen and cogent and they always fly home under the gleam of sunset.

* * *

 Clint Barton’s building is old, the kind of thing built when they still thought they could expand out instead of up. They’re few and far between, even in the weird, dirty, ancient Portland borough, and they usually attract attention—either for the graffiti or the notices of land use or the animal nests or the smell.

It’s creaky and visibly decaying. Years of graffiti and wind and rain have discolored the bricks, and there’s a crumbling fire escape on the side. The building squats in a twisting maze of dead ends and one way streets near the Columbia, brown and sluggish from a few hundred years of human refuse.

Kate hops up onto the roof across the alley and eyes the dilapidated fire escape. “Kind of a far jump.”

“No no no,” Sam says, pulling her down from the little waist-high wall. “I’m going first.”

He straps his gun to his back—doesn’t know why he draws it, anyway, but might as well keep up appearances—and he peers across the dark alley, gauging the distance.

“Why doesn’t one of us go?” Eli suggests. “If you fall—”

“ _No_ ,” Sam says. “That fire escape doesn’t look like it could hold Redwing, let alone one of you.”

America huffs behind him. “How is that—”

Sam bends his knees and springboards off the rooftop before they can keep arguing.

It’s the freefall. The feeling of not feeling anything at all. Pulling yourself apart from the earth. Sam wants that feeling every hour of the day.

The crash landing, not so much.

He kind of barrel rolls across the rusty metal, and it lurches against the wall with a shriek. The world swings and shakes. His knee strikes a sharp corner. He hooks an elbow around the frame of an open window and hangs on tight and waits for the fire escape to fall or to set itself right.

When the dust settles, Redwing is there, hopping from foot-to-foot on the stair steps. She must have sensed him doing something stupid.

“Yeah, _Sam!”_

“That was awesome!”

“Me next!”

Sam gets to his feet with a wince. “One at a time!” he calls.

Once Sam has pulled himself through the window and out of the drop zone, the kids follow him in a series of crashes and screeching metal. America, Kate, Teddy, Billy, Cassie. Last of all, Eli, and when he hits the fire escape, it gives a weird groan and buckles under foot, so Sam yanks him inside before they push their luck any further.

Sam straightens up, rubs his knee a little, claps Eli on the back, and glances around the room.

The top floor is cavernous, dank, and moldy. A wall of old busted warehouse windows lets the light in, big artificial shafts of floodlights blasting through from the square, swirling with dust motes and casting cross-hatched shadows.

Sam pulls his gun out again. Just in case.

He blinks hard and waves the dust out of his face and his eyes adjust to the weird lighting, and he can finally make out the contents of room. It’s cluttered bordering on packed, lined with lopsided layers of—junk. It’s _mostly_ junk, Sam thinks. Eventually, he gets distracted from scanning the room for threats by all the _stuff._

Everything is covered in a fine layer of dust, so that doesn’t help him determine what any of it is. Bunch of stuff with plugs and wires. Old-fashioned electronics. There’s at least one huge old clock, the kind with a face and slender arms and a pendulum behind a cracked glass door. The arm of the pendulum is broken halfway down. Underneath rests a tablet that’s at least a hundred years old, glass screen run through with hundreds of little fractures.

There don’t seem to be any _people_ though, so Sam steps cautiously into the room. The kids spread out behind him, slowly at first, then with less caution and more curiosity, squinting at all the weird gadgets stacked perilously around them. There’s a door across from Sam, and the next room looks just as dark and only slightly less cluttered. He heads there, gun down, and hears the kids follow slowly.

“This dude has a problem,” Teddy mutters. His voice is a little muffled by must and paraphernalia.

The next room is still a mess, although there’s a—kitchen, maybe, and a big old single-screen TV with several little figures and cups and candles balanced on the slim frame. Sam spots a few old computer monitors, the flat, square, 2-D kind. It’s anyone’s guess if they work.

One thing stands out, sitting in a clear spot in front of the only chair at the table. It’s a little radio with rabbit-ear antennae extended all the way and angled wide. It looks just like the one Sam has on his balcony at the Snapback. It’s not dusty, but it’s off, lit by shafts of light slanting through a half-assed boarded up window in the kitchen.

_Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal!_

A tinny voice rings out and everyone whips around to find the source. Sam gets one glance at the fake fish mounted on a grimy plaque, head and tail flapping in time with the tune, before America shoves a fist through its body. Sparks crackle as she pulls her hand out of its guts.

“Overkill much?” Cassie says, taking her hands out of her pockets.

“It was creepy,” America says with a little shrug.

“What is all this stuff anyway, Kate?” Eli asks. He lifts up a tangled rainbow of cords, then lets them snake to the floor.

Kate shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just Clint’s stuff. I don’t ask.”

Eli raises an eyebrow at her. She does it back.

“I think it’s kinda neat,” Cassie says. She’s examining a boxy appliance with a hinged door and numbered buttons.

“Yeah, I dunno if I’d call this room _neat,”_ says Teddy.

Billy perks up. “Look!” He says, finally noticing the radio on the counter. “This is—”

He starts to cross the room when the boarded-up window shatters—explodes—showers them with splinters. There’s yelling and cursing and half the kids duck for cover. Sam catches Billy around the waist and shields him from danger.

“Is that him?!” America yells.

Kate nocks an arrow. “I don’t know—”

Two figures, dark thorny silhouettes. One of them straightens up.

Sam sees the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo.

Someone opens fire; an arrow flies; a light bulb sparks. A strange machine over Sam’s left shoulder bursts with a screech, and pottery explodes.

“Stop, stop!” Sam roars, throwing a hand out to catch America before she steps into the path of deflected bullets.

Everyone obeys.

The air tenses and solidifies. The floor itself seems to vibrate and Sam’s not sure if that’s because everyone’s heart is racing or vice versa.

When everything comes to a standstill, he gets another look at the strangers: a small redhead with a S.H.I.E.L.D. patch over her collarbone, and a blonde dude the size of a refrigerator. The bullets have sprayed half the room. Kate’s arrow is firmly planted in the wood window frame. The kitchen island isn’t looking so hot either, and the radio is gone, just a spray of shattered plastic and wire on the counter.

But all of that is background noise; all Sam sees is this new sizzling weapon in the middle of the room. It’s the blonde dude: his arm outstretched, and something, a barrier, like a pale blue plexiglass shield, spread before him.

“What _is_ that?” Eli asks, peeking over a pile of video game consoles, gun drawn.

“New tech,” America spits.

Sam agrees. “They come up with fancy new weapons every week. We’ll figure it out, same as always.” He keeps his rifle trained on the woman, the one with government insignia all out in the open. He won’t fire, though, not so long as that shield shimmers between them. Doesn’t want to risk the ricochet.

“Who are you?” the woman asks, her firearm pointed steady on Sam’s chest.

“Who are _you?_ ” Kate counters.

“Enough!” Sam barks. He glares at the strange redhead. “Might as well shoot now, ‘cause you’re sure as hell not taking us in.”

Her eyes flick over America and Eli and then back to Sam. “We’re not here for you.”

“Okay, okay, everyone lose some steam,” Teddy says, stepping forward with both hands up. Sam’s shoulders tense up. “Cool down,” Teddy says. “How about we lose the guns, here? You obviously don’t want to shoot us, or you would have, already. And we don’t want to shoot you, so why don’t—”

“You _did_ shoot us!” the man interrupts, voice cracking.

Flinching, Teddy throws his hands up again. “Come on, guys—”

“That’s enough!” Kate shouts, stepping forward, arrow at the ready. “How did you know about—”

The roof overhead slams open, and Sam has a split second to think _trap door_ before a flailing figure crashes to the floor. He lands on his ass with a yelp. Everyone stares, weapons aimed, as he scrambles to his feet.

He spins in a clumsy circle, both hands in the air. “Hey everyone. You brought … guns.”

“Clint Barton,” Kate says, “you’re a fucking moron.”

“... Please don’t shoot me.”

She lowers her bow and stuffs the arrow back in her quiver, fixing the newcomer with a glare that’s all jawbone.

He ducks apologetically. Throws a glance over his shoulder. “Oh, hey, Nat.”

Beat.

“You _know_ these people?” Kate asks.

“Do _you_ know them?”

“We just met,” Sam says coldly, and he doesn’t take his finger off the trigger, either, you know.

“Right, I just—”

“Wait,” America interrupts. “Are you Hawkeye?”

Sam blinks. Out the corner of his eye, he can see Eli relax, and Cassie takes her hands out of her pockets which is very trusting of her but probably safer for everyone else since they’re usually full of ANFO.

“Hawkeye?” the man asks, hands still up. “I’m—yeah! Yes. I’m Hawkeye.”

“ _I’m_ Hawkeye,” Kate corrects him, folding her arms.

“Well—right, yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean, I’m also—but—yeah, I mean. You’re Hawkeye.” He looks over his shoulder, talks right at the woman with the S.H.I.E.L.D. gear. “This is Hawkeye,” he says redundantly, waving an arm at Kate. “Hawkeye, Black Widow. Black Widow, Hawkeye.”

_Black Widow._

Sam’s brain grinds to a halt.

“She’s right, Clint,” the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent says. “You’re a moron.”

“But seriously, don’t shoot me.” He does a double take looking at the counter, and his shoulders slump. “Aww. My radio.”

The huge blonde guy tilts a look at the Black Widow. “So is she your contact?”

The Widow shakes her head. “No. _He_ is. I’ve never seen this child in my life.”

“I’m _not_ a child,” Kate snaps.

“Aw, Nat, come on,” other-Hawkeye says, a pleading note to his voice. He drops the remains of the radio he was fiddling with. “Don’t be like that.”

The Widow raises one pointed eyebrow at him. She lowers her gun slowly. “You could at least introduce the rest of your friends.”

Clint looks at the kids. At Sam. “Oh, right. I don’t know any of them.”

“ _Stop._ ” Sam steps into the middle of the room. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent tenses, and the blonde man raises his shield, and Sam is antsy as hell about it but he lays his rifle right on the ground. “Are you the Black Widow?”

Sam’s not sure what he expects her to say. He never really pictured the Black Widow all those years, what she looked like, how tall she was or how red her hair might be. He knew the voice and he listened for the passwords and that was it. Exchange of info. Their mole.

Hard to reconcile all that with the person in front of him, tiny ponytail, S.H.I.E.L.D. logo over her breast.

Sam stares at her and has no idea what she’s gonna say or what he’ll say back.

She says, “Yes.”

Turns out his instinct is to laugh. Straight up just. All his air escapes in a huff of disbelief.

Not disbelief. Just.

“It’s really you?”

She narrows her eyes. “Yes.”

Sam reels a little bit. He glances at Eli, his big brown eyes, and remembers the round earnest look that kid gave him five years ago, when Riley pulled him right out from under the Baron’s nose.

He looks at Teddy and Billy and America, and back at the two strangers.

“You’re the Black Widow.” He laughs again, weaker. “I’m the Falcon.”

Nothing on her face shows any kind of recognition. But she stares. And the stare lasts long enough that Sam can tell she’s shocked. Her eyes flick to Redwing, perched on Sam’s shoulder, and her chest rises and falls a little faster than before. “The Falcon.”

Sam shrugs.

“So you’re …” she croaks, then clears her throat. “So … which one of you is the Artist?”

It sounds like steel on asphalt, metal fingernails dragging a deep screech into the street. That’s how Sam’s heart feels.

He opens his lips and doesn’t make a sound.

America and Eli glance at each other, an awkward trademark.

“Oh,” the Black Widow says. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Sam confirms. “Yeah, it’s. It’s part of the job.”

“Of course.”

He looks up at her, eyebrows heavy. “Part of _our_ job, anyway.” He scowls at the patch on her chest.

Sam’s lucky to have the kids around.

“It’s nice to meet you, finally,” Teddy says, and he doesn’t have his hands up anymore but they’re still kind of raised in front of him, just feeling the room out. “In person, I mean. I’m Teddy.”

The Black Widow nods.

“You kind of know Sam and—and I guess you just met Kate,” Teddy continues. “This is Billy, he’s our communications guy, so—”

“You’re the one who intercepts all my messages.” The Widow’s voice cuts like a shiv.

“I intercept everyone’s messages.” Anyone else would be bragging, but Billy just states it like business.

“Then there’s Cassie,” Teddy goes on. “Please don’t piss her off, she has all the bombs.” Cassie smiles. “And that’s America. She doesn’t have any bombs, but don’t piss her off either. And, let’s see, this is—”

“Isaiah?”

Everyone in the room freezes again, breath caught. The blonde guy squints at Eli like he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing, like it can’t be real.

“No,” Teddy breaks the silence again. “This is Eli Bradley.”

The dude sucks in a shaky breath, the shiny blue shield disappears, like he didn’t even know it was there. He blinks, still staring at Eli, and opens his mouth. Closes it.

“Oh,” he says, finally. “I—sorry.”

It’s the name that does it. Bradley—Isaiah, Eli—the Black Widow standing right there with them. The orphanage. Sam looks closer, trying to find something familiar beyond the blonde hair and blue eyes and big shoulders.

“Wasn’t Isaiah Bradley born like five hundred years ago?” America asks skeptically. “Are historical figures coming back to life, now?”

The blonde looks stricken.

And _familiar._ But _how?_

“Who are you?” Sam demands.

“Me?” The man takes a shaky breath and looks Sam in the eye. Glances at the Black Widow, then squares his shoulders. “I’m Steve Rogers.”

The silence this time is deafening, as Sam stares at Steve Rogers—Captain America?—his guileless eyes and clenched hands. He looks different without the mask and the shield and the flag draped over his shoulders.

And there’s something else there, like he’s carrying something. It’s in his eyes, weary and endlessly sad, deep beneath the surface. Sam can see it, sees it every time he looks in a mirror.

America mutters, “ _Mierda_ ,” and Cassie says, “Wait, what?”

“Steve Rogers?” Kate asks, face all screwed up with skepticism. “ _The_ Steve Rogers? Captain America Steve Rogers?”

“How many other superpowered Steve Rogers’ do you _know_ , Kate?” Billy asks. He’s taken a step back, half behind Teddy, who looks more suspicious than Sam can probably ever remember.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Eli says.

“Uh, Nat?” Other-Hawkeye—Clint—takes a half-step further into the little circle, puts himself between Sam and the kids and the Widow and Captain America. He keeps his hands up. “I know you have an explanation and I don’t wanna add to the drama of this moment but, yeah. What?”

“We came from the Tower,” the Widow explains. Or actually, she doesn’t explain, she leaves it at that and waits for everyone to come to her.

“They just got Captain America locked up on government property, or what, now?” Sam asks.

“His body was preserved in the Arctic Circle for over three hundred years.” The Widow just states it, just talks about wild miracles of science like she’s giving directions to the nearest Walgreens. “S.H.I.E.L.D. discovered the body and restored his consciousness about a week ago.”

Rogers flicks his eyes like he’s hearing it all for the first time.

Sam, on the other hand, feels eerily unsurprised. _They come up with fancy new weapons every week. We’ll figure it out, same as always._ “Is this some fancy lab experiment?” he asks.

Rogers squints.

“No,” the Widow says, then specifies, “Not the Baron’s lab experiment.”

“So what are you doing, running around peaceful protests, popping up two blocks away from the Winter Soldier and his STRIKE team?” Sam demands.

He means for it to sound aggressive, because who the fuck just blindly trusts history books that fall open on their doorsteps; but Sam doesn’t expect Rogers to go white as a sheet as soon as he speaks.

“The Winter Soldier is here?” Rogers asks, and there’s no mistaking the croak in his voice. He looks like he’s being haunted, or else he’s the ghost.

“The Soldier?” Sam asks slowly. “He’s not here. Yet.”

“We heard he would be at Tower Square,” Teddy speaks up. “Around the protests.”

Rogers darts for a window, like he might be able to see the Soldier with his own eyes.

“He’s not here for the protests,” the Widow says. Her voice is low, but somehow captures everyone’s attention. “The Soldier is here for us.”

Her words settle like dust over the room.

The kids don’t speak, not a word, not even America Got-An-Opinion-For-You Chavez. Sam glances at the window. Rogers stands silhouetted by the street lamps and city lights, outlined in a hazy yellow.

Finally, not-Hawkeye clears his throat. “Um, Natasha?” he says. “Can I ask why you’re leading the Winter Soldier to my house?”

Sam kind of expects the guy to get shot, to be honest. But the Widow just looks at Clint Barton and smirks. “Don’t you get bored, all cooped up in here?” she asks.

“Right,” Clint huffs. “Not bored enough to be assassinated.”

The Widow’s lip curls.

A wave of noise interrupts them, an incoming tide rolling against the walls of the building, then rolling back out. Sam steps up to the window, right next to this dude who claims to be Captain America. The streets look busy and full of bodies. It’s almost curfew and once that bell tolls, S.H.I.E.L.D. can start making arrests, if they want.

They don’t always arrest protesters, but once in awhile … well. They like to keep people guessing.

Instinctively, Sam looks up at the sky. There’s nothing weird on the rooftops, and beyond that, the light pollution starts to blot out the the clouds.

“What are they protesting?” Steve asks. His voice is much softer than his clenched fist would suggest.

Sam looks at him. “Free health care,” he says, spits it out nice and bold. If Captain America is here to uphold the law, well—might as well get a read on him sooner than later. Then again, if the Winter Soldier is hunting him, maybe he's trustworthy. The enemy of my enemy, and all that.

“No way,” Rogers says, voice deep, and looks Sam in the eye. "Free health care?" He’s not so ghostwhite anymore; the opposite, actually. There’s a deep flush in his cheeks that Sam didn’t notice before.

Sam doesn’t really know what he’s looking at: an innocent idealist, a righteous spitfire, broken glass, broken bombed-out buildings with no windows. Maybe all of it at once. He smiles wryly and looks back down at the streets. “Government got folks paying for their daily dose of anti-virus every week of the year.”

“That’s got to be the worst thing I’ve heard since I woke up,” Rogers says.

“For real?” Sam asks. “Living up there with the Baron and his STRIKE teams, and y’all ain’t heard nothing worse than a doctor’s bill?”

Rogers has that looking-glass-look again, the same distant gaze Sam tries not to give away every day. Rogers covers it up pretty well. Covers it up red and twisted and angry. The window sill cracks in his grip.

They both look at the splintered wood, and suddenly, like birds taking flight, they both laugh, right in time.

“God,” Steve breathes out. “I just didn’t expect—three hundred years, and people are still paying for basic rights.”

Another chant starts up from the streets. Makes Sam think of crows and graffiti.

“You sure this is the future?” Steve asks, and he laughs without smiling.

“It ain’t my future.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve doesn't really know what's going on, but the more he gets to know these underground rebels, the more he likes them. If he's lucky, he can help them and find Bucky, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ta-daaa! this story is not abandoned. in fact it's just getting good.

It’s then, in the darkening room of cluttered antiques, lit through the windows by the next building over, looking out over a street filled with rally cries; it’s then, for the first time, that Steve feels his age. He feels every cell spread across the centuries. Like fog, wisps of dew stretching into the early 2010s, and the tail of a cloud here, in 2390-or-whatever-the-hell.

He feels the anger of army recruiters and domestic partnerships tugging his heart in the past and here, too. An angry mob tugging the other way. Familiar anger pries Steve’s ribs open as he takes it all in, lets it stoke the fire in his chest.

He takes a sideways glance at this new person, this Sam. His face is focused and hard and three-dimensional and so present that for a second, Steve feels jealous.

He’s not jealous of that trapped look in Sam’s eyes, though. Caged off. And Steve remembers the look on Sam’s face when Natasha mentioned the Artist. The look is gone, now. Steve can tell it’s not something Sam reveals often.

He’s still staring at Sam Wilson when a bird bursts through the open window.

“What the—!”

Ducking and covering his face, Steve’s mind immediately goes into defense-mode. The shield goes up before he can even finish a thought.

There’s a small commotion. When Steve gathers himself and looks up through the shimmering blue force field, Sam is laughing, and a giant bird is sitting in his hand. Steve glances around the room. Everyone else is laughing and smiling, too, except Natasha, who is discreetly tucking something back inside her jacket.

Steve looks back at Sam. “You have a pet bird?”

“Sort of,” Sam shrugs. He lifts up his hand and holds the bird out. “Her name is Redwing.”

Steve stares. The bird shakes her head and shifts her grip on Sam’s wrist. As her feathers shrink flat around her shoulders, Steve realizes she’s not actually that big. She’s no parakeet, or anything, but when her feathers aren’t puffed-up, she seems to be the size of a small housecat.

“Wanna pet her?”

Steve blinks. Redwing ruffles her feathers. “Um, that’s okay.”

“She’ll warm up to you,” Sam says. His bird climbs up onto his shoulder, using her beak for balance. He continues talking as though birds crawling on him are as normal as rainfall. “We got a whole, what, 10 minutes before curfew?” he adds, looking over at the kids.

The girl with the turquoise hair holds up a little device that looks like a cracked cell phone. “Twelve minutes,” she says.

“We can split up after that,” Sam says. He nods down at the street. “Things will get busy down there, and we can all sneak out in peace.”

“‘Peace,’” one of the kids snorts.

An awkward silence follows.

Steve looks at Sam, who looks at Clint.

“Oh, sure, twelve minutes?” Clint says, and shrugs. “Make yourselves comfortable. Mi casa and all that.”

They relax, all of them. Or not so much “relax” as settle into the silence of focused anticipation. It’s distinctly awkward. After a few minutes, a quiet voice speaks up.

“Am I really related to Isaiah Bradley?”

Natasha looks up and catches Eli’s eyes. “I don’t know if I’m the one to ask.”

“It’s just, there’s no way to know,” Eli says softly. “Not like I got papers or anything. Or S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fancy DNA tests.”

“Well,” Natasha’s words are soft, rocking slowly and gently as she selects the right ones. “I’m not sure of anything. But when I made that call five years ago, when I called—Sam. I can tell you that S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed very sure of who they had.”

Eli glances around the room, then back at Natasha. “Me?”

“They were sure they had Isaiah Bradley’s blood-relative.”

Eli takes a deep breath. With his hair pulled back and his chest expanded, he looks just like him, Steve thinks. It’s in the details, really. The way his eyes catch the light and the way his bottom lip drops thoughtfully and the way his long fingers wrap around his hips. Whatever evidence S.H.I.E.L.D. has, Steve believes it. He believes his own eyes.

Eli blinks faster, and doesn’t answer right away. He folds his arms across his front in a kind of self-hug and inhales again. “Isaiah Bradley,” he says, “had his own unit, you know.”

Steve’s hands go still.

“After Captain America—fell.” Eli’s eyes flick to Steve, and back down. “He ran the operation for four more years, or something. Rooted out undercover Russian ops.”

“Really?” Steve breathes. He turns to Sam, who fixes him with a hard stare. Then he turns to Natasha and says, “none of that was in the museum.”

“I’m shocked,” Sam says flatly.

“I had no idea,” Steve whispers. “It makes sense, I mean—Isaiah was a natural, he was—I would have followed him anywhere. It just …” he trails off, looks at his fingernails. “You do look like him.” He says it on autopilot, and he knows he shouldn’t. Can’t help it, though, sitting here, 300 years in the future. Thinking about Bucky’s face, fuzzy and blue through a force field. _Fuck._

Eli lifts his chin. “He was a super soldier, too.”

“Of course.” Steve didn’t know for sure, actually. The confirmation is like a fist to his solar plexus. They had talked about it, though, Erskine and Isaiah, they talked about going through with it, even as Steve decided once and for all to fly that missile into the Arctic. “I mean, I was already—um. It was after the plane crash.”

“Well, the serum worked on him,” Eli says.

“Not that anyone broadcasted it or nothing,” Sam cuts in.

Steve shakes his head. Because, yeah.

He looks back at Eli, who _does_ look just like Isaiah, but damn, Steve met Isaiah Bradley when they were both in their mid-twenties. This kid is a _kid._ “Do you—I mean, are you enhanced? Like him?”

Eli lowers his gaze.

Around the room, the rest of the kids shuffle their feet and run hands through their hair and look at each other with expressions Steve can’t quite see. “What?”

“Steve,” Natasha says softly. “They all are.”

“All …”

“That’s the point.”

“Not all,” Sam clarifies. “But … yeah. _Captain_. They’ve been trying to turn you into an army for centuries.”

“Project Super Soldier,” Clint says, folding his arms behind his head and lounging against a dusty bookcase.

“More like freak lab rat rejects,” America bites.

“I’m not a freak!” Teddy protests.

Billy tilts his chin back thoughtfully. “I’m kind of a freak.”

“No one’s a freak,” Sam says wearily. He looks at Steve. “The government is still running experiments. They just … don’t use volunteers, anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this city alone has over a hundred thousand kids in foster care.”

Something dreadful claws at the inside of Steve’s ribcage.

“The prison system, too, but—but that’s a whole other deal,” Sam says, glancing out the window. “I gotta friend who could tell you all about it.”

Billy and Teddy give each other a knowing smile.

“Anyway, the kids—we’ve been smuggling them out for years,” Sam explains. “Five, six years. We’d get info from the inside. From the Black Widow. She sent us messages when she heard about major experiments going down, and we’d smuggle them out.”

Steve stares at Sam with a _holy-ever-loving-God_ feeling in his heart. Then he turns to Natasha, very slowly, and stares at her, too.

She smiles grimly.

“You’re, what,” Steve says, feeling dumb. “You’re a double agent?”

“You could call it that.” She tilts her head toward Eli. “Eli Bradley was the first one I heard about. I already knew about the Falcon and—and I figured. Maybe he could do something about it.”

Eli melts into the shadows, leaning against a beat-up jukebox and sliding to a seat on the floor.

“You knew about the Falcon,” Steve says, shaking his head. He looks at Sam. “How? What was … why?”

Sam stuffs his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “I’m a lab rat reject, too.”

“Plus he’s street famous,” Teddy says.

“Hush.”

Not that Steve is well-informed on historical events of the past two-hundred years, or anything, but he feels like his whole world is changing. He gazes around the room, staring at each of these people in turn. “So … you’re all super soldiers?”

Teddy snorts.

“Definitely not,” Sam says with a half-smile.

“Fuck that, I’m totally a super soldier,” America cuts in.

“True,” Sam nods. “America’s about as close as they ever got to Captain America. I mean, the only difference is that she’s …”

“Way too brown and queer for Baron Shitface’s fascist army?” America says, batting her eyelashes.

Kate falls over backwards in a fit of giggles.

Sam rolls his eyes. “I was gonna say ‘short’.”

America shrugs.

“And the rest of you are just—? What—sorry. I mean.” Steve has no idea how to ask about evil lab experiments gone wrong.

“Well,” Sam says, leaning his hip on the window sill, “I can talk to birds.”

Steve glances at Sam’s pet hawk.

“Yeah,” Sam answers the unasked question.

“The Falcon,” Natasha adds with a meaningful nod. “And the Artist? Did he have any enhancements?”

“Nope,” Sam smiles at his shoelaces. “Government never laid a hand on him.” He stops hard, like his voice has reached a fissure in the ground. His throat moves as he swallows, and then he continues as if nothing happened. “Kate, either. She’s a good shot, but she’s never seen the inside of a lab.”

Kate stops fiddling with her arrow to point it at Steve. “Gonna keep it that way, too,” she says.

“And Cassie—”

“I went through combat training,” she says, “but never saw a syringe. Sam and Riley got me out right after I learned the good stuff, though,” she says, smiling, and fiddling with something in her coat pocket.

Sam continues around the room. “Eli is—he’s fast, he’s just not as fast as America.”

Even as everyone else laughs, Eli doesn’t look up, keeps his head bent between his knees.

“Teddy’s the opposite of America,” Sam says. “He got real big real fast, but he can’t barely do a pull-up.”

“Thanks, boss.”

“You alright,” Sam says, and his smile twinkles. “Teddy is our Master of Disguise.”

“I dunno about ‘master’,” Teddy says, making air quotes with his fingers. “But I can grow a beard in about two hours,” he says with a wink.

“Didn’t you have blue eyes yesterday?” Cassie asks.

“I did!” he says, grinning. “Thanks for noticing!”

“And Billy …”

They all turn to look at Billy, the skinny kid with wild black curls. He looks at Sam, then back down at the little radio in his lap. He fiddles with a dial. “I can talk to witches.”

Steve opens his mouth and closes it.

After a confused silence, America finally speaks up. “That’s the creepiest thing you’ve ever said,” she says bluntly.

Kate shoves her and gives her a good old what-the-hell look.

Teddy leans forward and hooks his chin over Billy’s shoulder. “You can talk to just about anything,” he says.

Billy hums. “The Witch is the most fun, though.”

“Telepathy?” Natasha asks.

“Radio waves,” Sam says. “We think. Sound waves, radio waves. Something like that. … We don’t really understand Billy. But we’re sure glad he’s on our side.”

“I think I can get this fired up,” Billy replies, tapping the old radio.

Eli gives him a fist bump.

A roar rises from the streets. Another small commotion as the kids scramble to their feet and gather their things. Kids, they’re just kids, how old are they, how old were Steve and Bucky when they shipped off to—

“We shouldn’t be here.” Natasha hisses, shoulders hunching.

“Who’s ‘we’?” The Falcon barks. For a split second, Steve understands the nickname—just the way his glare could pierce through Natasha’s body armor. It makes sense.

“Steve Rogers and myself, definitely,” Natasha says, folding her arms. “All the rest of you, probably.”

“ _We_ have a job to do,” Sam says.

“You don’t know the danger you’re in,” Natasha insists. “We could all—”

Sam crosses the room in two steps. “Don’t,” he growls. They face off, Sam and Natasha, two weapons, different weapons built for different jobs. “Don’t you tell _me_ about danger.” He presses his palm to his chest. “I ain’t the one with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s logo plastered all over my clothes.”

They glare at each other, and steam practically rises between their eyes. The silence stretches. Steve is about to speak when Natasha reaches up to her own chest, grabs the S.H.I.E.L.D. patch, and rips it right off. “Happy?”

Sam squints at her. He watches the patch fall to the ground and send up a puff of dust. “Better.”

“I’ve been working with you from the beginning,” Natasha points out.

“Yeah, I know it,” Sam says. He sidles back and cracks his jaw. “You been helping from that nice, safe Tower.”

Natasha looks at the floor. After a few moments, she says, “I won’t tell you what to do. But Steve and I have to leave. It’s us they’re looking for. If they see us, they’ll capture us and … use us against you.”

“So keep your mouth shut,” America says.

“I’m not talking about information,” Natasha tells her. “Steve and I have—other skills the baron would like to control.” She gives Steve a meaningful look. “We have to hide.”

“Then go ahead,” Hawkeye says. The girl Hawkeye.

Eli Bradley agrees. “We got work to do.”

A roar rises from the streets, followed by a noise like a stuttered siren. Steve looks out over the seething crowd and frowns.

“Can’t use the streets,” Sam says. He approaches Steve again, follows his gaze out the window. His voice is almost gentle. Almost. “You tryna escape, gotta stay above ground level. Down on the sidewalks, there’s guards, cameras, turrets, facial recognition, remote paralysis—”

“Got it,” Steve says shortly.

Sam pats his shoulder, but pulls his hand away quickly. He clears his throat. “The lower you get, the closer you are to danger.”

 _But danger might mean Bucky,_ Steve thinks.

“Hey boss!” Billy’s voice perks up from deep inside the room. “Got a working radio!”

“Tap into S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Sam calls back. “Keep an ear out for coordinates first and foremost.” He turns back to Steve and Natasha, lowering his voice again. “There’s a skywalk four blocks north. It’ll get you across the turnpike and out of the military district.”

“You sure you won’t come with us?” Natasha asks.

“We’re here for a reason,” Sam says, hands twisting around his firearm. “Provide cover fire for protestors. After curfew, the police will use _any means necessary_ to keep people under control.”

They all fall quiet as another wave of noise blossoms from the street.

“So you fire on them?” Steve asks, trying to picture it all.

“Sure,” Sam says. “Keep the military occupied. Distract them so the mob can regroup or retreat.”

“Wait, so is it police or military?” Steve asks.

Sam shrugs. “Same difference.”

Steve almost falls off his feet. He glances at Natasha, her knitted brow and pursed lips. He looks at Sam, his clenched jaw and his unblinking stare. When Steve swallows, it hurts his throat. “... I want to help.”

A hint of a smile curls Sam’s lips. “Thought you had to hide?”

“I don’t hide from fights,” Steve says.

Sam’s eyes drift to Steve’s chest, his feet, his hands, and back up to his face. “Remember, you can’t get close to street level.”

A piercing whine of static interrupts them. “S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Billy says, his voice deeper, somehow, and cutting. As he continues, his eyes glaze over, and his voice flattens to a monotone. “Deployment from the North side of the Tower. Deployment to the statue. Winter Soldier sent South on 48th.”

Steve’s heart skips; Sam curses.

“Did you say Winter Soldier?!” Steve strides toward Billy, but Teddy cuts him off.

“Easy,” Teddy says. “Not when he’s wiretapping.”

“Did he say Winter Soldier?”

“Yeah, which means we’re fucked,” Sam says.

Natasha moves in the corner of his vision. “Steve—”

“No, no, I’m not running anymore!” Steve says. “Where did he say the Winter Soldier is?” He rounds on Billy again, glaring over Teddy’s shoulder. “Where is he?!”

“Winter Soldier crossing Schmidt,” Billy drones.

Steve whirls. “Where is that?”

“Schmidt?” Sam repeats. His brow is furrowed. He darts to the window. “I thought he said 48th.”

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks.

“Schmidt is here,” Sam clarifies, waving out the window. “But 48 is a mile away. Maybe there’s some kind of interference.”

“Or the Soldier’s faster than we thought,” America deadpans.

Here.

Schmidt street, here, the Soldier’s location. Bucky’s location.

Steve feels helpless, like he’s been left out in the spotlight and forgot his lines. Not even that—more like someone tore half the pages out of his script and shoved him onstage without telling him before the show.

Luckily, Sam is there.

“We move now,” he says, while Redwing flutters on his shoulder. “If they fire back, take care of yourselves. Usual pairs. If there’s even a whiff of the Soldier, you’re _out_. No questions asked. Two rendezvous points, Team A to Snapback and Team B to Alias.”

Steve pulls his shoulders back. “If I get a _whiff_ of the Winter Soldier, I won’t be—”

“You here to look out for my kids or your own ass?” Sam demands.

“... Which team am I?”

Sam smirks. “You’re with me,” he says. “Team B is a little more subtle.”

“Are you saying I’m not subtle?” Steve asks.

Sam’s lips quirk. “I ain’t saying it’s a bad thing.”

Natasha clears her throat. She glances between Steve and Sam and her eyelashes do that fluttery thing that’s not quite rolling her eyes. “So I guess that makes me Team B?”

“Awesome,” Kate says.

“What’s Alias?” Natasha asks.

“Our friend runs a place by the Wall,” Sam explains while distributing handheld comms and keeping his bird calm. “It’s good for smuggling, easy to defend. Far enough away we can lose a tail.”

With a nod, Natasha snaps a clip in her gun and grins at Kate-Hawkeye. “Lead the way.”

“Wait,” Steve cuts in. “What do you mean? Near the what? Did you say ‘wall’?”

Sam shrugs his bird-free shoulder. “The City Wall.”

“... Is that like … a wall around the city?” Steve asks.

“He’s quick,” one of the kids says drily.

“Yeah,” Sam says with what appears to be the only patience left in the room. “The City Wall. Our rendezvous is a little more--”

“Why is there a wall around the city?” Steve demands. “Are they trying to keep us inside?”

Eli Bradley makes a noise in his throat. “More like trying to keep stuff out.”

Keep stuff out, what kind of zombie apocalypse bullshit? “What are they trying to keep out?”

“People who look like me,” America growls, shouldering past Steve a little more roughly than necessary. “Can we move?” With that, she jumps out the window onto a little brick ledge.

Eli follows her. Sam cocks his head at Steve. “You ready to go?” he asks, before hopping outside.

Natasha touches Steve’s arm. He turns, and she presses a handheld radio into his hand. “Take this.”

“Isn’t this from like, two centuries ago?”

“I do research, old man.” She smirks, then tightens her fingers around his elbow. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Steve gives her a mini-salute. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The “subtle” team stays behind, scattered among the windows in Clint’s building, wherever they can get a clear view and a clear shot. Redwing swoops into the sky.

America, Eli, and Sam lead the way down the exterior wall, and Steve follows, the thrill from the vertigo pumping in his veins. He’s not as sure-footed as the others, but in his defense, he hasn’t spent much time crawling up and down skyscrapers. America is fastest; Eli the most fluid; and Sam seems to spend more time jumping than climbing.

America leads the way to a deep concrete awning around the building’s fourth floor. As the rest of them drop down, she’s already gone, sprinting to the end of the building and around the corner. Steve catches up to Sam just as they round the edge of the building, and he skids to a stop.

Steve gapes at the sight before him. The crowd in the street churns all the way around the building, boiling at the feet of towering skyscrapers. They’re even more breathtaking from the ground.

From the corner of his vision, Steve can see Sam watching him.

“Tower Square,” Sam states.

The cluster of buildings before them is like the sheer face of a canyon, some soaring overhead, others smaller. None of them are particularly short—it reminds Steve of New York—but none of them come close to the height of the gargantuan statue in the center. It glints in the slanting sunset, and for a moment that and the sheer size of it distract Steve from what it is. Then he sees it’s got a shield on one arm, a familiar helmet covering half of the face, and he realizes that this colossus is _Steve_ , it’s a giant golden statue of _himself_ , and Steve reels back, shaking.

“Is that—”

An explosion cuts him off. America and Eli stagger, and Steve throws his arms out to steady them. A cloud of smoke and dirt rises from the foot of the statue.

“Shit,” Eli mutters.

The people in the square have scattered, running away from the statue, and the turmoil starts to ripple through the crowd. A clear line moves through the crowd, a line of shields, a line of body armor pressing against the raging people.

“That’s the police?” Steve asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says distractedly. He and America prop their weapons on the little cement wall and gaze through their sights.

Steve glances over his shoulder at Eli, standing behind them, shaking his head, color drained from his lips. And as Steve looks at Eli, he sees a small red dot appear on his shoulder.

“Get down!” Steve roars, tackling Eli to the ground.

The brick wall explodes, leaving a small crater behind. Shouting. America and Sam hit the deck, and one of their rifles skids across the concrete as they duck for cover.

For a brief moment, the eye of a storm, they all gape at the bullet hole that was meant for Eli.

And then, more firecrackers, a small shower of pebbles and cement debris.

“Are you shitting me?!” America bellows.

“Snipers,” Sam barks.

Eli gets up on one elbow, then flattens himself to the ground after another spray of gunfire. “What if it’s the—”

The awning shudders in a small explosion.

“That’s it, move!” Steve orders. Doubled over, using the short wall as cover, he yanks Eli after him and tears down the block. “There!” he roars. Waits for the bullets to stop, then shoves Eli through a boarded-up window.

He stands up and conjures a shield. A shower of bullets ricochet out of sight as Steve beckons America and Sam through the window.

They tear through the building. This level is just as abandoned as Clint’s, though not as cluttered; Steve barrels through rotting doors and rusted hinges, and America kicks through the drywall at his side.

“Does it usually go this well?” Steve shouts as they skid toward the windows on the opposite side of the block.

Sam scowls, then hurtles himself out the window across the alley. With a clang, he snags a fire escape and starts to climb, all in one motion.

“Holy shit,” Steve breathes, staring.

“Oh, stop,” America scoffs. “He does that all the time.” With that, she follows Sam’s leap across the alley, just as fast and almost as graceful.

Eli slaps Steve on the back. “You get used to it.”

First, Eli makes the jump, and Steve follows hot on his tail. Before he ducks into the building, he turns to scan the rooftops for their pursuer. He scopes the building they came from; he peers at the buildings across the street. The sun is sinking, bruising the clouds. An insectlike silhouette flickers against the purple skyline.

“Captain, come on!” Sam shouts. “Let’s move!”

“Was that Bucky?” Steve asks.

America grabs his arm and pulls, and Steve staggers a little bit. Which shouldn’t happen. He’s stronger than this, who on earth—but was that Bucky across the street?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” Eli asks.

The silhouette is gone, now. Steve stares at the glowing evening sky. “The Winter Soldier,” he says softly. “Was that the Winter Soldier?”

“If that was the Soldier,” Sam says, “then you really don’t wanna stick around. We should—are you _kidding_ me?”

Steve, Eli, and America all spin and face him.

“Well, how are the protesters?” Sam asks, and he presses close to Steve so he can see out the window.

Steve frowns. “I … I don’t …”

Sam leans out the window and scours the rooftops. “Okay,” he says. “We can lure him away and they can handle the cops.”

“What .... They …?” Steve stammers.

Eli waves from the shadows. “He’s talking to Redwing.”

Steve looks at Eli, and then at Sam. He’s very close, and very focused. With a start, Steve stumbles away and knocks into the door to the balcony. Redwing. The bird. “Right.”

“You get used to that, too,” Eli says.

While he’s gazing at Sam and his furrowed brow and his dancing eyes and _wondering_ , that’s when Sam whirls to look Steve in the eye. He jumps. Feels like he got caught eavesdropping.

“How long can you hold that shield?” Sam demands.

Birds. Shields. Soldiers. Snipers. “How long?”

“We’re gonna climb to the roof,” Sam explains, stepping close again. “Will it last that long?”

Steve tilts his head to look up the fire escape.

“It’s the Soldier, isn’t it?” America asks, something hungry in her teeth.

“The four of us are gonna lure him away,” Sam says darkly.

Steve looks him in the eye. “It will last.”

“The shield?”

“We’ll get to the roof.”

They do. Deflecting bullets, one floor at a time. Steve tested the shield in the 2000s; firing ranges, explosions, real-life missions and real-life commandos. They tested its limits and never got there and never got there until the ocean was the limit. Or the cold.

But there’s no ocean here in the urban wasteland, no cold in the valleys of the coast, and if the rooftops will get him closer to Bucky, well.

Rooftops, rooftops, rooftops. Sam this time, not Natasha. And Eli, and America, and red and white and black and blue. Rooftops and fifty-caliber holes in the bricks by Steve’s head.

After some time, they can’t even hear the protests, anymore.

“We haven’t lost him yet,” America pants.

“We’re not trying to lose him,” Sam reminds her. They duck around a corner and drop onto a ledge. Sam looks left, then looks right. “What do you think?”

Eli shakes his head. “We can’t lead him to the Snapback.”

“Or we _could_ ,” America says, eyes growing wide.

“What’s the snapback?” Steve asks.

“That’s where we _live!”_ Eli hisses. “We can’t just give it up!”

Sam’s hand shoots out and grips Eli’s forearm. “It’s not giving up. It’s tactics.”

If that’s where they live, then what Sam is saying—Steve’s breath catches in his chest. “You don’t mean—”

“It would buy us some time,” America says, saying what Steve is thinking. And what Sam must be thinking. And what Eli doesn’t want to think.

“If they wreck the Snapback, where we gonna go?!” Eli demands.

“If they wreck Snapback, they’ll think we’re gone for good,” America says. “Then they’re off our backs.”

Eli’s face twists.

“You guys don’t have to do this,” Steve says, mind reeling. He thinks a lot of things at once—like how to save the kids and how to save their home. How to stop Bucky without hurting him or hurting Sam. He thinks he could stop all this if he could just look in Bucky’s eyes again.

If he could just.

“We’re only four blocks away,” Sam says. His face is solid rock, eyes fixed on Steve, searching, as if there are questions in his mind that he won’t speak aloud. Questions about Steve. And then, after several seconds, Sam decides: “We’re going.”

Gunfire punctuates his declaration. Steve throws up a shield, and a nearby cement windowsill shatters like glass.

As they cross the next four blocks, Steve trails behind, keeping the other three in his line of sight. It takes a great deal of spatial awareness, of mental effort, to cover four moving targets with one shield. The bullets are few and far between, now, which helps. And Steve has been doing this for years. ( _Centuries_ , he thinks, and it would make him chuckle if he weren’t distracted. It reminds him of the old infiltration ops with the Howling Commandos.)

Only now, Bucky is the one shooting at him.

Steve trips and catches his focus again. They’ve crossed two blocks already; then another alley, and a skylight, and a maze of air-conditioning units, and an abandoned pigeon coop, and—

“There!” Eli shouts.

Steve follows his gaze to an old burnt-out sign on an abandoned building. Or it looks abandoned. “That’s where you live?”

“That’s where we _used_ to live,” America says darkly. She hops up onto the ledge of the wall, but before she can leap across to the balcony under their sign, Sam grabs the back of her jacket and yanks her down with a bellow.

“Get down!” Sam manages.

Steve, ever obedient, stands up straighter and conjures a shield so that he can see across the street.

A figure appears on the roof and drops down to the balcony. It stands up straight. It pulls a rifle off its back and aims at Steve.

“Bucky!” he roars.

“What the fuck are you doing, man, are you outta your mind?!” Sam yells, between the kids, hunched behind the cement wall.

“Is it the Soldier?” America asks.

“It’s my friend.”

She peeks over the parapet, only for Eli to tug her back down again.

“How did the Soldier get ahead of us?!” she cries.

A bullet ricochets off Steve’s shield. “Bucky, stop!” He hops onto the wall and doesn’t even gauge the distance before hurling himself across the alley.

He tackles the Soldier to the ground and they roll. Steve rips the rifle away as they get up and separate, then tosses it into the street, down, down, doesn’t hear it land 4 stories below. For just a moment, they stand off; the Soldier with a mask across his face, wild mop of hair obscuring his eyes, long sleeves, black body armor. Steve, on the other hand, has never felt more exposed, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and police-issue sweatpants, but it’s _Bucky_ , he just has to get _through_ _—_

The Soldier is on him again, now armed with a knife. They scuffle across the balcony, but the Soldier fights like a cat, nimble and relentless and on all sides at once. Steve is finally able to kick him away and find some distance. Finally able to breathe.

And Sam appears, soaring across the balcony, knocking the Soldier off his feet and rolling away.

“No!” Steve roars.

America comes next. She dives from above, wrapping an elbow around the Soldier’s neck, teeth bared. Writhing, they stumble away from Steve. The Soldier bucks her against a wall, and her arm tightens. “No!” Steve shouts again. “Don’t hurt her—don’t hurt him!”

America twists, and she goes flying; the knife goes flying; the Soldier’s mask goes flying. He pulls himself to his feet and tosses his hair back.

It’s not Bucky.

The dark, shaggy hair is the same, hanging unkempt in the Soldier’s eyes, framing a narrow face and piercing brown eyes.

“What?” Steve says, because it is all he can say. It’s a trick, he thinks, it must be, or else the Tower was a trick, and it was never—

“Oh my god,” says a voice over Steve’s shoulder. He cranes his neck and gazes dumbly into the shadows of the building. The dusty bar, the chairs strewn across the floor, a table upended, and Sam Wilson standing above it all, staring. A shaft of light slices through the room and beams upon Sam’s dumbstruck face.

“Oh my god,” Sam says again. “Riley?”


	12. Chapter 12

_Eli traces a stripe with the tips of two fingers. “We should hang it where everyone can see.”_

_“We should_ burn _it where everyone can see,” America grates._

_Sam’s throat burns. “Tower Square.”_

_“Sam!” Riley shoves him, a delighted smile splitting his face. “Think of how that would look!”_

_“Think of what it would_ say _,” he agrees._

 _Sam’s heart just leaps, his heart feels the way Riley’s face looks, it’s like caffeine straight to his system. The question isn’t_ should we burn it; _the question is_ how do we set it on fire in the middle of a crowd? _Kate is a great shot but there’s always more to it. Plus she’s only been with them a couple weeks, asking her to shoot a flaming arrow into the heart of government property is an unfair orientation._

_Anyway, deciding to do it is easy, they just have to be careful, most of all. Figure out how to do it without a casualty._

_The real rule._

_No casualties. Sam and Riley practically got that carved into their skin, no casualties, nothing and no operation is worth losing a_ person _, they’re not the_ government _. They’re not the baron. They’re not like_ that _, like kids don’t matter or faceless masses don’t matter. Everyone matters._

_It’s important. But it does complicate missions._

_So when the kids drift to bed, there’s no kind of plan, not yet, just a plan to make a plan._

_Eli disappears to sleep, America and Kate disappear into the back apartment, and Cassie disappears after food. Teddy lights a candle and Billy sits in the little puddle of light and tinkers with radio wires._

_They leave Riley and Sam alone out on the balcony. The privacy of city lights and feral birds and siren screams. Sam bends his neck and squints up at the sky and its cocoon of light, of golden fog, of what it’s like to taste ninety degrees fahrenheit, even in the dead of night. Redwing ruffles her feathers and twitters and tucks her head back under her wing._

_Fabric rustles behind him, and Sam turns around. Riley is folding up the flag so the stars are on the inside._

_“I know they’re real,” Sam says. “But sometimes I wonder. You know?”_

_Riley blinks at the field of blue. He gently wraps it up in stripes. “They’re real.”_

_“I just wonder.”_

_Riley looks up, his eyes and his hair catching the light, the light of towering buildings and neon signs, it makes him look ultraviolet, the colors in his face when he looks at Sam, it makes Sam feel ultraviolet. “You wonder if they’re real?” Riley asks._

_“If we burned them out for good.”_

_“So let’s find them.” Riley springs up like there’s a current running through him. Like someone flipped a switch. He doesn’t run on the same power as anything else, on this mundane manmade shit. He runs on something real. He runs on outer-space-colors and the long-lost names of trees. “Let’s find them,” he says again with more energy and more certainty._

_Sam’s heart catches. “Find the stars?”_

_Riley grins._

_“We’ll never see them,” Sam reasons. “There’s too many clouds.”_

_“Let’s do it anyway.”_

_Scaling fire escapes is second-nature to Sam these days. Climbing stone facades and steel supports and skidding down slanted roofs just to sprint up the next one. With Riley beside him; or sometimes Riley pulls ahead and leaves laughter behind like footsteps; or sometimes Riley drifts back and lets Sam find the safest path. Sam doesn’t do it on purpose, he just knows where to go and not to fall, he can picture Redwing leading the way even though she’s sleeping back home. He knows the flight pattern of every bird and every freckle on the face of the city._

_Sam pauses and gazes across the street and he sees all the little footholds, automatically, eyes scanning like software designed for the job._

_“We’re not high enough yet,” Sam says, glancing at the clouds and the light pollution._

_“The bank building,” Riley answers. “They don’t have guards on the roof.”_

_Sam looks at it; one of the tallest buildings in the city, two blocks over, and two blocks closer than Tower Square. Same finds himself staring. He finds himself thinking if the baron can see the stars, or his lackeys or his Winter Soldier, can they see all the beautiful things everyone else tells stories about._

_“There’s guards all over Tower Square,” Riley says, reading Sam’s mind._

_“Let’s keep moving,” Sam bites._

_When Riley grabs his wrist, he jumps._

_Sam tries to hide a smile. “We can’t stop now.”_

_“I’m not stopping, I’m pausing.” Riley puts his hands on both sides of Sam’s face and plants him with a kiss like they’re not even in the middle of something else._

_They don’t breath until they part._

_“_ Now _let’s go.”_

_“Fuck you, Riley Reyes, now I gotta catch my breath.”_

_“You were already out of breath,” Riley grins. Then he leaps across the street and snags a wrought-iron balcony._

_They cross the roof, slink across a skylight, scale a block and then two blocks and then they climb. Climb and climb and climb. When Sam gets tired he stops to peek in the scrubby little bird nests. When Riley gets tired he pulls out a pocketknife and scratches names into the side of the building._

_“Putting our initials in a little heart?” Sam asks._

_Riley looks up at him with round eyes. “I could do that.” He says it like he already done it._

_“We still have six stories to go,” Sam replies._

_Sam gets to the top first. He heaves himself over a waist-high wall and turns around to pull Riley up, too. And even when Riley is steady on his own two feet, Sam doesn’t let go of his hand. Riley spins a little, face turned up, eyes already on the sky, eyes glowing gold, and Sam doesn’t have to look up to know._

_Riley’s hand slips away. “They should_ be _here!” he roars, and it doesn’t even echo, just gets sucked up into the stench of foglight._

_Sam looks up, even though he knows._

_There’s no stars, just the stifling citylight steam that clogs everything from the streets to the penthouse suites. Sam breathes in the usual thick stink and sighs it out._

_“If we can’t see the stars now, we’ll never see them,” Sam says._

_“This is the tallest building we can get to.”_

_"But it's not the tallest building in the city," Sam reminds him._

_“W_ _e’ll never be able to sneak into Tower Square.”_

_Sam clenches his fists and his teeth. “Someday we won’t have to sneak.”_

_“Someday we’ll see them,” Riley whispers._

_He drifts away, wanders across the rooftop, always tilting but never off-balance. Riley is smaller than Sam, light and bouncy, as if his center of gravity floats between his collar bones. But he looks tall from far away with the clouds draped over his shoulders. The broad brightness of his shoulders, like he was built to burst into the sky._

_His lips are moving. Sam can’t really make it out, just bits and crumbs._

“Te quiero, mi vida, no necesito la ciudad, ni las estrellas. Te quiero solo.”

_“Those better be sweet nothings.”_

_Riley turns pink under the fuzzy citylights. His eyes skitter away from Sam’s, and he twirls across the roof and cranes his neck and smiles. Smiling, even though they still can’t see the stars. “I want to paint them. I wish I could see what they look like.”_

_“Paint them anyway.”_

_Riley stops moving. He turns to Sam, smiling, always smiling, and now with glitter in his eyes. Glitter in his words when he says “I love you” for the first time._

_Sam has never been in love before, but he’s never seen stars with his own eyes, either._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry to uh leave you on a cliffhanger and then extend the cliffhanger <3 
> 
> but hey! thanks for reading i hope you like it and i hope you love riley! i was literally just telling lisainthesky how much i love riley. (i love him a lot.) and i love you guys.


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